Posted on Monday, December 2, 2019

How to Trust Your Team With Your Business with Stacy Tuschl

Episode 118

Stacy Tuschl started her own business at the age of 18 in her parents’ backyard and turned that into a multimillion-dollar company that she still runs today.

Stacy is also a bestselling author and founder of the Foot Traffic Formula that helps small businesses get more customers in the door. She was recently named the 2019 Wisconsin Small Business Person of the Year by the United States Small Business Administration.

In this episode, Stacy talks about the four phases of her Foot Traffic Formula that she created as a result of utilizing foot traffic to grow her business to where it is today, the importance of taking the time to really evaluate what works in your business and what doesn’t, the lies many of her clients tell themselves that have a negative impact on their businesses, what the transition was like for as she expanded her business and began building a support team, how she trains new team members to ensure their success, how she communicates her brand identity to her new members, her company’s four values, how she handles team members who cause drama, and more!

Mentioned in this episode:

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcript

Hey, hey! It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast where we explore the intersection of human dynamics, communication, and service, all under the umbrella of influence. So, if you’re interested in growing your own voice of influence or the influence of those on your team, check us out at voiceofinfluence.net and we would love to talk.

Today, I have with me Stacy Tuschl. Stacy started her own business at the age of eighteen in her parents’ backyard and turned that company. That company that she started at eighteen into a multi-million dollar business that she still runs today. Congratulations on that by the way, that’s fantastic. She is a bestselling author and founder of the Foot Traffic Formula, helping small businesses get more customers in the door. Stacy was recently named the “2019 Wisconsin Small Business Person of the Year” by the United States Small Business Administration.

Andrea: Congratulations, Stacy, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast!

Stacy Tuschl: Hi Andrea, thank you so much for having me.

Andrea: Well, I’m really interested, what is that business that you started at eighteen?

Stacy Tuschl: Yeah. So, I started teaching dance classes in my parents’ backyard. We had seventeen little middle school girls coming to the backyard, and within three years we had a hundred kids. And now today – this is actually our 17th year – we have about a thousand music and dance students that come to us every single week. And we have two locations here in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Andrea: Wow, that’s awesome!

Stacy Tuschl: Thank you.

Andrea: What are some of the things that you suggest that people do to grow, to get more foot traffic? Now I know that that’s part of what you talk about so tell us just a little bit about that too.

Stacy Tuschl: Yeah. So, one of the things that happen very naturally and organically for me was we just kept growing. And we started in 2002, so even through the recession, 2008 and beyond, we just kept getting bigger and bigger, and people started to go, “How is this happening? Most people are going out of business or they’re losing business, but you’re getting bigger.” We built our first custom million-dollar-plus building – which for Wisconsin, that’s a pretty nice-looking building – we built that in 2008.

I mean, literally our contractors, as we were building the building, were going out of business. We had to hire new people to keep building, and our little dance studio was just blossoming. So people started to say, “How are you doing this? Tell us what you’re doing.” And I naturally just started to kind of teach what we were doing. And with our Foot Traffic Formula, it’s these four phases, you know, it’s driving traffic to our business, getting people to understand who we are, that we exist, what we do, what we can do for them.

And then the next piece is really making sure that we’re driving them to us, but we’ve got to capture and touch them, and get their contact information, make that first connection. That next piece is transaction, how do we get them to actually buy with us today. And then that last piece is tracking, which is really understanding your numbers, what’s working, what’s not, and just doing more of what’s already working.

I always tell people, “You’re throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks, but you’re not looking to see what’s sticking. Like, you’re throwing it and then you’re gone to the next thing.” But when we throw it, we look and we’re like, “Why did that stick? Why did that not?” And then we go from there and that’s a big, big part of what we do here at Foot Traffic.

Andrea: Hmm. Why do you suppose it is so hard for people to kind of… you know, they’re trying new things, but they’re not necessarily going back to figure out what is it that works. Why is that so hard for people to do?

Stacy Tuschl: Yeah, that’s a great question and it was hard for me. I mean, I don’t want anybody thinking naturally I was able to do this. I had to learn a lot. I’ve really just invested in growing and learning about how do I make this be a true business versus just a hobby. I think, first of all, one of my problems was I’m a doer. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs, we like to do and we feel like how we can measure our success is by how hard we worked and what we’ve done.

I grew up in an entrepreneurial family where my family has a construction business, and I watched them be very successful, but I watched them work. I watched them, you know, be out before the sun got up, and I watched them come home after the sun went down.

And for me, it’s like a lot of us, the way that we grew up is we watched really hardworking people, and now we’re trying to do that too. But I think we’re not understanding is a different time, it’s a different world. We can actually have very successful businesses and not have to work as hard as generations previously. So, I think we’re just so used to doing, doing, doing, but we’re not stopping to actually see what is working, what is moving the needle in our business, and what we really should be truly focusing on.

And I also think it’s a mindset that entrepreneur, like if you’re a quick start, I don’t know about you, Andrea, but I love like getting new ideas and implementing. That’s the fun stuff. It’s hard to stick with something. It’s hard to finish it, and it’s hard to do the non-fun, you know, spreadsheets and numbers. A lot of people don’t like that stuff. And honestly, I always say to people, “That’s where the fun stuff is actually happening. That’s where the profit margin shows up. That’s when you start to see the difference in your bank account when you get to that tracking section.”

Andrea: So true, yes. I am also a quick start, but you’re right, if you don’t go back, I mean… I’ve heard it over and over here in podcast interviews that one of the keys to success, in general, is the ability to take a step back and do some reflection. So that makes a lot of sense.

Stacy Tuschl: Yeah. It takes a lot of discipline, and it’s something that I’ve had to work on because I love that next thing, like go, go, go. And it’s hard to sit still. It feels like, “Am I doing anything? Should I be doing more?” You start to question it, and that mindset just starts to really jump in and question yourself.

Andrea: When you work with businesses, what are some of the biggest internal challenges that you’re seeing women face in growing their businesses? Those things that are going on inside?

Stacy Tuschl: Yeah. I think the thing we just brought up with that mindset is we’re telling ourselves so many lies, and maybe we’re making excuses. Maybe we truly believe it, but we’re saying things like, “I just don’t have time.” “I don’t really have the money.” “I could never grow my team.” “It’s too difficult.” “It’s too expensive.” “I would never want to do that.” “It doesn’t sound fun,” right? “It feels heavy.” Like, we’re making up all of these things that I said. Either we’re believing them or we’re allowing ourselves to believe them so we have an excuse to stay in our comfort zone, right?

It’s really easy to feel good where we’re at right now, and that next level, we don’t know if we can do it. We don’t know if it’s possible. We don’t know how well it will be received from our audience, our customers. And it’s scary to do something you’ve never done before. And as an entrepreneur, we are faced to do that every single day. So, I just think a lot of times we get stuck in our own ways, and we self-sabotage because we like where we are right now, even if… I should say we liked the feeling of where we are right now even if we’re not happy with our bank account, our business, our team, it’s still a little scarier to branch out and do something you’ve never done before.

Andrea: Hmm. So true, and especially if you sort of grow up being really good at something like the craft of dancing and then you’re sharing that with others, that sort of thing. Then you took it many steps further. You created a business out of it that wasn’t just about you, but you obviously must have a number of people that are teachers now. So, you took that to that next level. Why is it hard for people to go from that point of, “This is what I do, I’m really good at that,” to actually building the team?

Stacy Tuschl: Yeah. A lot of us start as what I call the technician, right? So I was the dance teacher. Every Sunday, we had a hundred kids getting dropped off, and I was the only teacher. And then finally when I think I just had to really take a look at what do I want this to be and how is this truly going to grow. And when I realized it was so much bigger than anything I could do on my own, I had to give up the fact that I didn’t know how to hire.

And I’ve never been a manager, or a leader in that way, or had to be responsible for payroll, or you know, somebody else’s family and them having to pay the mortgage. And all of those fears kind of came in. And I will tell you that I have a team right now of… I think we have about forty-five employees in my Brick & Mortar, and then I think we have a team of about six in my online business in Foot Traffic. And the bigger we get, the easier it gets. And people just don’t believe me when I say that. But I really truly believe, I mean there’s no way I could be running the business I’m running.

My Brick & Mortar, just so you guys know, I don’t work in the business. I don’t teach dance classes. I don’t take phone calls. I don’t work the front desk. I strictly work in my home office on the business, and you can’t do that if you’re the technician. It’s just too difficult. My daughter, she’s six and she always used to say, “When I grow up, I’m gonna be a dance teacher like Mom.” And she didn’t realize, I’ve never taught a dance class since she was born. But she doesn’t know that, she thinks I’m a dance teacher, and she just recently said, “How come you never teach, Mom?” She was like, observing me, and I had to explain to her.

At some point, it got so big, I almost feel like I became the principal at a school. You know, the principal doesn’t teach classes. His whole focus is just to make sure everything runs smooth, and that’s what I’m doing in my business. And I think so many times we get stuck, if we’re using the school analogy, thinking we have to be the teacher, but that’s not the case because the bigger you get, pretty soon a principal needs to step in and really help with running everything.

And I think maybe, again, we feel comfortable staying small, we get nervous of what that feels like. But when you’re growing a team and you’re delegating, trust me, it is a skill. If you say, “I’m a control freak, I can’t imagine letting somebody else do this,” you just have to learn. I mean, it’s a skill that you will have to get better at. You will have hard mistakes that maybe cost you money or cost you more time. But in the long run, it will make you more money than you can do on your own, and it will save you so, so much time.

Andrea: Do you ever miss being the technician?

Stacy Tuschl: Not in my dance studio. I have friends that do miss it, and we’ll go back to it. And I think that’s maybe why I don’t miss it is because if I wanted to, I could teach a class right now. I could put out a Facebook ad saying, “Hey, Miss Stacy’s, you know, gonna be in the studio this day in time,” and I could sell that class. So, I think because I know, as the owner, I can do whatever I want to do, that if I want do it, I can do it.

So, I think for me, as I’ve evolved… I mean, I started that business literally the summer I graduated high school – I was still seventeen, and now I’m thirty-five. I’ve grown up, you know, and I think I realized too, as somebody who grew up in an entrepreneurial family, I didn’t realize how much of this business stuff I was going to love. And now that’s like, the part that I’m obsessed with is I just love business and I love what it can do for our families, our community, our customers, just everybody.

Andrea: You really do have to fall in love with the process, the business process.

Stacy Tuschl: Yeah, you do.

Andrea: Okay, so when it comes to building that team, was it hard for you to let go of your students? Was it hard to sort of put your… I don’t know, your brand, I guess, in the hands of other people? Was that difficult?

Stacy Tuschl: Yeah, it was a little scary, and I kept thinking, these are the stories you tell yourself, like, “Everybody’s going to want me,” right? Like, “Who’s going to want to work with this person? I’m that person.” But here’s the thing, it wasn’t like overnight, I was the main person, then I was out. It was a gradual, and I’m talking several, several years. So, maybe I first took off a few of my classes. Like, I cut my classes in half, and I only taught my favorite classes that I love to teach. Which when you think about it, that’s me being in my zone of genius, so it makes more sense, right?

And then, you know, I slowly started to lose more and more classes until I decided, “Okay, it’s time for me to really own other areas of this business.” I wasn’t the front desk. I didn’t really fully do a lot of the admin stuff at the time because I was so bogged down by being in the classroom. So then I was out of the classroom, but I started to work the desk. And then I was working in marketing, and I was really trying to own these areas, put systems in place, and then I would hire somebody. But before I would step out… I think when people hire people, they think, “Well, I hired her, and she doesn’t know what she’s doing. And I’m very confused why this is… you know, she should be doing this.”

You don’t hire somebody and they magically know your brand, your business, your vision, your values. You have to teach them. So when somebody comes and they work for us… I should say when I was training, they would come with me, I would teach them how I would do it. They would watch me and observe me, then there was a period we would do it together, and then there was a period where they did it and I observed before I ever let them go out on their own. So that’s how you get comfortable putting other people in a role that you used to do, and you will have so much [of] that fear of, “Uh, can she do this?” It’s like you’re raising children, and you’re teaching them how to like, leave the nest. That’s what you’re doing with your employees and your team.

Andrea: How did you and how do you now communicate the DNA of your company – the mission, vision, values, all those sorts of things. How do you communicate that and make sure that your team is really embodying that?

Stacy Tuschl: Yeah, definitely. So, we have company values, and it’s something that we try to have in as many places as possible where it’s almost like, so in your face that you can’t not understand we have company values. So, whether it’s social media, in our lobby, in emails, in newsletters, like, it’s just everywhere. But then at the same time, we want to acknowledge. So, I think when you have company values and you do them once, but you never talk about them and people in your team can’t remember what they are, it’s really hard to say that you’re embodying those values.

So, one of the things that we do is we are rewarding our employees as we see them. So, actually, we do a monthly leadership meeting, and one of our staff said, “Okay, I actually saw one of our teachers do this. He was off the clock. He was helping this student. Like, wow, this really embodied like the high standards aspect of our company values.”

So what happens is we acknowledge, once a week, a certain employee. We kind of shout them out. We share this to the public, to our Facebook, social media, all of that. But we do it internally to the other staff and say, “We want to acknowledge this person. This is what we noticed – like, what a great way to display this value. We honor you, we see you – like, so grateful for you.” And we actually give them a $10 gift card to Amazon, and every single week, somebody new is being picked.

So, when you’re talking about fifty-two times a year we’re bringing up a value and talking about a way that somebody displayed it… First, it’s really starting to make you remember which values are really embodied in your business. Second, when you see other people getting awards, you’re thinking, “Oh.” Like it almost makes you up a level to go, “I wanna be the person that gets acknowledged. I wanna be that person that they’re talking about.” So, I think it really kind of steps everybody up. Like, a little inside competition like that is good for everybody. You know what I mean?

Andrea: Sure.

Stacy Tuschl: Not in a negative way, but just to really stretch your team.

Andrea: I think it kind of helps people to even see what’s possible. Sometimes people, if it’s not there in front of them, they don’t even know that it could be like this. But when they’re hearing it, and then they’re seeing it, and then they become it, I mean, that’s just… it’s really great.

Stacy Tuschl: Absolutely, yeah. And I think instead of just saying like, “One of our company’s values is high standards,” to just say a story that goes along with it, and people are like, “Oh, that’s what she means, right?” All of a sudden it’s a lot easier for them to understand like, what you expect of them.

Andrea: Hmm. Do you have any other tips for leading a team? Anything in particular, especially when it comes to trying to influence people to work together, that sort of thing?

Stacy Tuschl: So, even going off of the values in Foot Traffic, we have four company values. Number one is integrity, number two is high standards, number three is resourceful, and number four is results driven. So before we even hire somebody on our team, they do a test project – which weeds out so many people right there because they’re thinking, “I’m not doing a project if I’m not getting paid to do a project.” So, when somebody is turning in this kind of like test assignment, all we do is we look at our four values, and we rate them on those values.

So, what’s fun is they don’t know that those values exist. Maybe they do, maybe they’ve checked out our website, but maybe they don’t. And they’re giving you this assignment and you’re judging them off of their personality type and how they would approach any assignment. So, what’s nice is when you finally hire that person, one of the first conversations I have is those four company values and how they basically got the job, like where they just excelled. And imagine as somebody who’s brand new to the team, and you’re sitting here sharing with them like, where they are just a rock star and why we picked them.

Again, when you hear the things you’re good at, you have a tendency to want to do more of what you’re being acknowledged for, right? So, we’ve hired the right person. She has displayed those four values and now in thirty days when we talked to this person again, all we do is go over those four values and we say where we think we’ve seen them over the last thirty days, what’s working. Maybe where we’d like to see a little bit more in one of those categories, and we’ll reevaluate in another thirty days.

And when you pick these values that really align with what you’re expecting, they can’t be fluffy. Like, you can steal mine if they really are yours, but if you’re like, “Oh, it sounds good.” No, with us… I mean, integrity, it means if you say you’re going to do something, you’re going to do something. And when we have high standards, we expect you to treat each other with kindness. We expect you to go above and beyond for our customers. We expect you when you present your tasks for the week, they’re not just average, but they really are above and beyond. We expect you to not just be reactive when there’s a problem, but proactive to resolve problems that don’t even have to happen.

And then the last one is we’re looking to get the job done and that’s why it’s results driven. So when we look at that person, I mean, it’s just such an A-player, and it makes us feel confident. We’ve hired the right person and we’re going to keep her accountable to those four values.

Andrea: Hmm. I really loved the idea of making sure to say, “This is why we picked you.”

Stacy Tuschl: Yeah.

Andrea: I think that that’s got to be really influential in how they then approach their job in the future.

Stacy Tuschl: Yeah. And I mean, I haven’t applied for a job in quite awhile, but I remember, you know, going into these interviews and then getting hired, and you’re nervous, and you’re not sure if they like you or what you should be doing or what you’re good at. And when you can just off the bat say, “Listen, we noticed this about you and we’re excited,” they know where to lean into, and you’ll just have such a great start with them.

Andrea: Great. Okay, so I’m guessing that at your dance studio you probably have a lot of women that are on the team, and you’ve worked with a lot of businesses that potentially have women on the team, maybe lots of women on the team. One of the things that I have heard a lot about over the years is just this tendency for there to be a lot of drama when there’s a lot of women together. Is that you’ve seen, number one, but number two, what do you think are some of the common aspects of companies that actually don’t have a lot of drama, but they have a lot of women on the team? Like, why is that?

Stacy Tuschl: I think it’s like, you get what you tolerate, right? So if you’re letting it happen because, “Oh, it’s normal. Everybody complains about their job so if they’re complaining about me…” You know, that’s just something where I’m going to address something that I have an issue with. And yes, I mean, 99% of our students are girls. I would say like, 90% of our employees are women. And I have two sisters, no brothers. I have two daughters, no sons. I mean, everything about my life is all girls, and I’m not a drama person, and I just think it’s because I just won’t tolerate it.

And so many of us, again, just think, “Well, I have to tolerate it so I guess this is just gonna be what we need to happen.” And you set the tone, right. So, they’re following you. So, be very conscious of the way that you’re talking to other employees, that you’re discussing things with leadership team, and all of that because they’re going to follow your lead for sure.

Andrea: So when it happens, when you do happen to see a little bit of drama – maybe you’ve tried to set the tone, but you do happen to see some drama – how do you approach it? How do you make sure that they understand that it’s not tolerated?

Stacy Tuschl: Yeah. So, and I don’t want you to think that it doesn’t happen because it would be physically impossible for the amount of people in my life that this wouldn’t happen. So, last year, I had a situation where I had somebody on the team who was constantly re-sharing things that were happening that maybe had nothing to do with her, that was kind of like lighting a fire under it, and it was becoming a thing. You know what I mean? Like, if she would have just not said anything, nothing would have happened. But because she was sharing things, things were starting to escalate.

So, I had to sit down and discuss this. And what we first realized was she believed… like, I believed that was gossip, and she believed that it was just her sharing her opinion. And when you don’t agree that it’s the same thing, you have to really understand and come to those terms that like, I understand where she’s coming from, but I wanted her to know that I perceive it as gossip, and I will not tolerate this in the future. And it had happened already more than once. And this was me saying, “I’m dead serious here, and I love you. I love having you here, but if this continues, you will not be a good fit to be here.”

And this was a really a serious conversation. I mean, it definitely ended in some tears, but she took it seriously, and we haven’t had a problem since. And I think it’s just having those hard conversations when they come up versus how easy is it just to vent to somebody – your spouse, one of the employees, like, “I can’t believe she’s doing this again,” – but not actually like, going to her and saying, “This is a problem. I don’t want this to keep happening. You know, I want this to be a good working relationship with us, but how do you think I feel when all of these things are sparking because you keep sharing and spreading things that don’t have anything to do with you,” right?

So yeah, it’s hard. I hate having those hard conversations, but I really hate being mad at something that just continues to happen when I have not said anything about it.

Andrea: I was just going to ask, do you feel like it is hard for you to be direct like that, but obviously you just said it is kind of hard, but…did you ever find it just like, “Oh my gosh, I’m so afraid of having this conversation, but I’m gonna have to do it anyway.” How did you get over that hump into actually having those hard conversations?

Stacy Tuschl: Yes. So first of all, every personality is different. So, some of you might be able to have that conversation so easily, whether you grew up in a way that your family was just very honest and that’s how you’ve learned. For me, that’s not the way that I grew up, and it’s almost like I would rather brush it under the rug, but I know that it’s going to slow my business down, and it’s going to hurt me, and it’s going to hurt, like, the growth in the business. So a couple of things is sometimes it just takes longer than it needs to for me, and I realized that that is a weakness, and I need to just get more direct. It’s better for them, and it’s better for you, right?

I mean, no employee wants to hear that you’ve been so mad at them for like six months or a year, and you’re finally bringing it up. I mean, nobody wants to hear that. So as tough as it is, go there out of love, go there and explain to them that, “I really like you. I really would like to see this work, but I do want to address this.” Then another thing that I realized with me is as my team started to get bigger, I was no longer even able to hire people. I wasn’t able to be there as much as they needed for me to hire. So, I started to have like, department heads come in and to hire their departments.

And one of the things that I did was I made sure I put managers in place that could hire and fire because it’s a lot easier for me to be like, “This person needs to go. You’re gonna to have to tell her,” right? Versus “I’ve got to go fire everybody.” I actually don’t fire anybody in my business right now. Like, you get hired by… our rule is whoever hires you, fires you. I don’t hire. Now, if you have been with me… I mean, I’ve been open a long, long time and people had been with me for over a decade when I maybe hired them, if one of those people were to be let go, I would absolutely be the person to let them go out of respect.

However, now moving forward, there’s almost like many bosses in my business because of how large we are. And hiring somebody that can almost be the void in your weakness, even if she has to tag team it with you when you have the conversation together, that could be really helpful, or bring your spouse in if they’re in your business as well.

Andrea: Hmm. So it’s time for us to kind of wrap things up. I’m wondering what sort of last bit of tip about having a voice of influence would you like to leave with our audience?

Stacy Tuschl: I would say just really being true to yourself. We talked about taking that time to reflect; and the more you can learn really truly who you are, and what you stand for, and what you believe in, what you’re passionate about, the more you can really bring your authentic self and not have to feel like, “Oh, I should be doing this,” or “I need to be doing this.” You’ll naturally be doing those things. So, I think just taking that time and on a consistent basis – it’s not a one-time homework assignment. It’s something where you really need to step back and decide, “When am I taking these breaks?” “When am I reflecting?” “When am I deciding?” “What’s next for me and my business?” And as you start to do that, I think as a voice of influence, it will naturally be coming to you so much more.

Andrea: Hmm, so good. All right, Stacy, thank you so much for being on the podcast today and a voice of influence for our listeners.

Stacy Tuschl: Thank you so much for having me, Andrea. I really appreciate it.

Posted on Monday, November 25, 2019

Are You a Helper or a Guide? with Rosanne Moore

Episode 117

I’m incredibly excited to introduce you to Rosanne Moore. Rosanne is my Communication Strategist and the producer of this podcast. Basically, she’s my right-hand woman.

Rosanne and I first met in 2012 and, while she did edit my book, UNFROZEN: Stop Holding Back and Release the Real You, she’s been officially part of my business since February 2019 and I’m so grateful for her. Not only has she been a joy to work with, but she’s also been my lifeline.

In this episode, we discuss how I knew Rosanne would be a good fit for my team, the time she called me out when I wasn’t owning my voice, how the movie Frozen inspired my book, how editing my book helped her process the ending of her marriage, the four conflicting voices she discovered in my book during the editing process, the difference between teaching a body of knowledge and teaching something you embody, the difference between being a helper and being a guide, and more!

Mentioned in this episode:

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcript

Hey, hey! It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast. It is really my joy to have with me today Rosanne Moore. Rosanne is actually in our business. She is our podcast producer. She helps coordinate logistics for the podcast, and she helps with a number of other things, strategy to communication – communication strategist, I like to call her. But Rosanne is really my right-hand woman right now, so I’m really grateful for Rosanne. She’s been a part of the business since February, I believe it is, in 2019, and just has been such a joy for me to have and not just a joy, but, like a lifeline. It’s been really helpful, and I’m thrilled to introduce to you Rosanne Moore.

Andrea: Rosanne, welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast!

Rosanne: Thank you. This is an exciting opportunity and I have loved this year working with you.

Andrea: Awesome! Yes, yes, it’s been fun. It’s like, you know, when you get to do things with your friends and you know that it’s meaningful. How does it get better than that?

Rosanne: Right. And I love the fact that you really practice what you preach in terms of how you set up your teams. And so it’s fun working with you and knowing that we really are a team and that what I’m doing is making a difference.

Andrea: Absolutely.

Rosanne: So, it’s always a good thing for a job.

Andrea: Definitely. And I think one of the important pieces of that is just, first of all, the level of respect that I have for you. I think we have to start with that. When you’re building a team, if you’re wanting to have everybody have a voice of influence, you want to have some respect for the people that are working in the team. And so for me, one of the ways that I knew that we would be a good fit was that you were the editor for my book Unfrozen.

Rosanne: Right.

Andrea: And the way that we knew that that would work…Well, shoot, let’s just take them back, shall we?

Rosanne: I was thinking the same thing.

Andrea: So, backtracking, step-by-step. So, we met in, I believe it was 2012 at Larry Crab’s School of Spiritual Direction, NextStep. He has this School of Spiritual Direction, two different levels. We’d both previously been to the first week individually, and then we were at the same one at the same time in 2012 for the NextStep, and that’s where I met Rosanne.

Rosanne: Yes. And I’ve done more than one of his schools, and that week in particular, our group, just kind of… a core part of us just stayed together and extended the relationship well beyond that week. And so when you approached me a few years later about the book, we had been in touch enough and had shared life enough that it was really exciting to me. We had so much in common.

Andrea: Yeah. Yeah, we stayed in touch. I remember, Rosanne, that was a really hard week for me, and I’m bringing us back to that because I do actually talk about it in the book. And it was a hard week for me because I had been depressed for a couple of years since having our son. So, he was still just two, and our daughter was four, or approximately those ages. And I went to NextStep thinking, “What am I supposed to…sort of, what’s my next step? Who in the world am I? What am I supposed to do with this person that I am?” I was in personal turmoil, for sure. And I know you had plenty going on in your life as well.

Rosanne: Right. I was in the midst of a marriage that was coming to a close, and that week was struggling with, “Is there any way to salvage this?” And so, yes, I was very much in transition at that point as well. And, yeah, different circumstances for both of us, but I think we were asking a lot of the same questions.

Andrea: Yes, yes. And I remember that we had a conversation in which…it was, like, at the dinner table.

Rosanne: Uh-huh.

Andrea: I don’t know if you remember this, but I remember I got on fire about something, and I can get on fire. I don’t always do that in front of people, but because sometimes I get too fiery, you know, or too icy, if you will, which we’ll get to in a second. But, anyway, I was on fire about something, and I think it had to do with women and their voice in the church.

Rosanne: Yeah.

Andrea: And I knew that I was really struggling and didn’t know what to talk about it. I didn’t really want to sort of be known for questioning that.

Rosanne: Right.

Andrea: And we got into the room with Larry Crabb, and everybody’s sitting there. And then I remember you said, “Andrea had something to say about this at supper.”

Rosanne: I put you on the spot without meaning to, right?

Andrea: You called me out!

Rosanne: I so related to what you said, and I thought you articulated it so well, so clearly. And then the questions that you were bringing up, the battle that you were wrestling with was one that so many women in particular wrestle with. And the whole thing of, “How do I juggle it all” and “Who do I really want to be, apart from all the stereotypes of what I ‘should’ be as a good woman”, and all of that. And you just articulated that so well. That is why I wanted more discussion on it and then, yeah, I put you on the spot without meaning to.

Andrea: It was good for me. It was good for me, for sure, because there were a lot of times that I hold back because I know I have something fiery inside, and, quite frankly, I am afraid of it.

Rosanne: Yeah, yeah.

Andrea: I’m afraid of that passion and that energy because, what if I’m wrong, number one. What if I hurt somebody, number two, and what if I alienate myself, number three. So, for me, to be in that environment where I needed to go ahead and step out, and say what I needed to say because you felt like it resonated… I feel like that is such an interesting picture of the way that our relationship has progressed, Rosanne, and how we believe that God has been putting us together, and using us and the way that we move in the world now, yeah.

Rosanne: Yeah. I remember the concern at the time, because you were concerned that it was going to come on too strong, and Larry’s response initially was kind of, “Well, don’t be about your own voice just for your own voice’s sake, about ‘being heard.’” And what I said at the time was – what resonated with me was – I didn’t feel a selfish, self-directed element to what you had shared. It really was about, “How do I show up and be the woman that God has called me to be? How do I bring to the world what I’m called to do?” Not in a, like, demanding “here I am” sort of way, but not being afraid, like you said, of being present, and showing up, and offering as a gift whatever it is that God has put in our hearts. And that was what I so strongly resonated with and still do.

Andrea: That’s awesome! So, yeah, so fast forward a couple of years, I needed help. I remember I had a blog post… an article that I was writing for an, I don’t know, what do you call them, an online magazine, I guess. And I needed some editing help. So, you helped me with that, and then I realized your capabilities in that area, which then led to me asking you to be the editor of Unfrozen when it was time.

So, let’s talk for a minute. When this episode comes out, it’s interesting because Frozen II will have just come out. So we are actually recording before I’ve even seen that movie, before I’ve seen Frozen II, and the sort of impetus for Unfrozen and the title for the book, the reason why I started writing it in the first place had to do with the movie Frozen. So, the reason why it matters is that when I initially saw that movie Frozen, I was so struck by all the parallels that I saw between my life and Elsa’s life. And those were very conceptual.

I wasn’t literally locked away in a castle but, you know, the ideas of holding back and hiding and covering up one’s hands so that you didn’t feel everything. You know, lots of different things like that that I could relate to and then finally, in the end, the idea of offering oneself in love, not worrying about what other people thought, that was the ultimate kind of reason why I felt called to do something, to do more, whatever more meant.

Rosanne: Right, right. Yeah.

Andrea: So now we have Frozen II coming out, and I will have seen it by the time this comes out, I can tell you that. But we don’t know yet what the whole plot of the movie is. I don’t know yet how it will relate to me, or if I’ll feel like I relate to it at all or anything. But we do feel like it’s a good time to kind of bring back up some of the reasons why we put together the book Unfrozen.

Rosanne: Right. When you first approached me about it, I was excited about the idea simply because I like writing, and I like editing, and I’ve worked as a reading instruction specialist, so I love getting children hooked on reading, children who have struggled with reading. I love seeing the lights come on and have them enjoy reading. So anything bookish, I like. So it was an exciting project from the beginning when you approached me about that. But when I got into the content of where you were going as we talked through it, because when you first presented kind of your first “brain-dump” on paper, there were a whole lot of things you wanted to say, and you weren’t quite sure which pieces fit, and which didn’t, and what you wanted to do with it.

But when that happened, when I read where you were coming from, I got really excited because I’ve spent most of my life in the South in conservative circles where female roles felt very, very prescribed and very narrow. And I thought maybe it was just a cultural thing, but you were from the Midwest and here you were asking very similar questions. You were struggling with very similar dynamics, in terms of what was okay and what wasn’t okay, and “You might be overpowering if…” and “Too much if…”, and all of that.

And so it helped me not only think through messages that I had received because I was very much in the process of sifting through the impact of all of that on my marriage and the loss of my marriage and questioning. I happened to have been in an abusive situation and so there were a lot of accusations that were being thrown. So, working on the book with you actually helped me sift through what’s true, what’s not true, what’s mine, what’s not mine. And what does God have to say about all of this? That was the anchor, and then how do I share that with my daughter, who at the time was 13. So, it was a privilege to go through that process with you.

Andrea: You know, it’s interesting that the process of finding my voice, if you will, you helping me find my voice because I think that, as you mentioned, I had so many different things that I was wanting to say and that was really plaguing me. I mean, it was this dark, dark cloud around me feeling like there were too many things. There was too much. Again, that theme of feeling like it was too much, I felt like I had too many things to say. I was trying to sort through them, but when you’re in your own head, it’s very difficult. It’s very difficult to do that for yourself, for anybody, especially when you’re me and you’re like a crazy person inside, your brain just going… all these things.

So, one of the things that you helped me do was to identify that. Number one, when I started writing the book, I wanted it to be like a workbook for children and their parents because I thought, how can we help kids to understand some of the connections that I had made with Elsa and sensitivity and gifting and all those things and how to use that as a way for kids to be able to open their eyes to who they are and even maybe even make an impact on parents. But, as we got going, you were telling me, “Andrea, there are like four different voices right now in your book.” So, you want to tell a little bit about that?

Rosanne: Yeah. You would give this narrative in one place and draw somebody in and they were really engaged in the story, and then you’d switch kind of to teaching mode. And then there would be kind of this like Bible study mode. I don’t remember what the fourth one… I remember there were multiple voices, and you were flipping back and forth. And so part of what you were struggling with was the many voices that you were listening to.

And what I said to you, basically what it came down to was, it’s your story. It’s your voice, your narrative that people need to hear. That’s what’s going to have the power that people will relate to. It’s not all the things you can give them. It’s yourself, your story.

Andrea: And that right there, everybody needs to hear that.

Rosanne: Yeah.

Andrea: Everybody watching or listening to this needs to hear that because I see it so often with people who are wanting to make a difference, where they do what I tend to do, which is go into teaching mode and neglect to truly connect with the audience. And even if they do give a little piece of it, but, not that you’re giving everything but, you know, the full picture, I guess. You know, we tend to give people a taste, I guess. And so for me to go through the process of saying, “Whoa, wait a second, what is the story?” I didn’t want to be the story and still sometimes wish that I wasn’t the story.

But yet I can see, I understand now, you know, people will tell me that they got the book, and then they sat down, and they read it all in one sitting. Like, really? That’s crazy. But apparently they connected with me and my story and the way that you helped me frame it. So, I have a different perspective now I think on what I need to be, who I need to be for people in general. I don’t necessarily want to be the teacher. I mean, I’m typically, I’m like, “That is what I am. I do that. I teach.” I always thought to myself, you know, I learned so that I can teach other people. And in a lot of ways, that’s true, but I have found over and over and over again that people respond a lot better to me telling my story about how you learned something than to them, you know, listening to some training.

Rosanne: Right, sure. Yeah, and I think for all of us growing in that authenticity where we show up with ourselves – and some of us are strategic thinkers and some of us are teachers by nature – but you do have a sense of the difference between somebody who’s teaching a body of knowledge, and somebody who is teaching something that they embody. It’s different, and the dynamic is different.

Andrea: OK, go into that a little bit more. That sounds really interesting.

Rosanne: If you’re teaching a body of knowledge, it’s all out here. It’s all analytical. It’s all in your head. But if it’s something that you’ve incorporated into who you are, and so you’re teaching from a standpoint of the whole of who you are, you’re bringing yourself, you’re being present as you bring it and you’re being authentic with your audience, which is what you do very well. I think that’s very different, and it’s far more powerful. There’s an authority that goes with that that expertise by itself doesn’t command.

I think people are hungry for authentic people who show up and say, “I’ve been where you are. I can guide you because I’ve been over this terrain.” I think we’ve talked about this ourselves before. I think there’s a difference between helpers and guides. There’s a place for helpers, but guides have had to walk the terrain themselves, and they ask different questions. They listen better. They’re willing to make sacrifices that helpers don’t necessarily know to make or understand to ask, things like that. It’s different.

Andrea: So a helper – let’s just flesh that out just a little bit more – a helper does what exactly then? A guide has been through the terrain and is showing you sort of the way, what does a helper do?

Rosanne: I think helpers can provide encouragement. They can provide support. They can meet practical needs in the moment. The danger is when a helper thinks they’re a guide, and so along with their effort to give you a boost, they also try to tell you what to do. And guides don’t do that. Guides listen. Guides ask questions before they start giving advice. Guides make sure they understand what’s happening. They don’t try to fix it. They try to lead you.

Andrea: I like that. When I first started trying to, like, nail down what it was that I do or what my calling was or how to describe myself, I remember one of the phrases that came to mind was sort of this idea of helping people navigate the deeper places in their soul. And I think that helping people navigate, guiding, is foundational for having a voice of influence the way that we talk about it, because people can lead. You can definitely lead and tell people where to go and that sort of thing, or what to do or give them the help that they need to get there.

But what does it mean to embody that voice of influence, to be the guide, to be the person helping navigate? That, to me – it’s harder to explain sometimes because a lot of times we feel we’re very practical, and we want to see practical results immediately. Whereas, what would you say, Rosanne, what would you say that a guide does and the results that end up coming from being guided versus being helped?

Rosanne: I think a guide honors the journey of the person that’s in front of them. They’re not in a hurry to ease the discomfort of it because there’s a recognition that there’s a process that that person has to go through themselves. They can have someone alongside them that can be a sounding board, but growth is very individual. Nobody can do it for you. And so a guide recognizes that there is a journey each person has to take themselves. And so they can encourage that journey, they can give you feedback on that journey, they can give direction so that you don’t get lost on that journey. But it’s not something they try to do for you.

And I think helpers – when helpers are at their best – they supply resources for the journey. They encourage you. They can give practical help, but when they step in and they try to do the journey for you or they try to rescue you from it, that’s when they do damage instead of actually help. And a guide is wise enough to know, “I can walk alongside you, but there’s a process you have to take internally that you have to be willing to show up for in order to get where you need to go.”

Andrea: I think that one way to describe the difference there would be the difference between, kind of immediate impact and transformation over a period of time.

Rosanne: Right, right.

Andrea: So, if you’re wanting to become somebody, if you’re wanting to begin to embody something, if you’re wanting to be the person that you are called to be, if you’re wanting to, you know, help your people transform into brand ambassadors, you know, that’s one of the things that we help companies do. That is a transformational process. It’s not something that’s a one-and-done like, “Here is this aid, this thing that’s going to help you.” It’s a transformational thing that comes from the inside, and it grows out which is, you know, a concept that I think is just incredibly important to remember.

Rosanne: Yeah. It’s the difference between a quick boost – that gives energy in the moment that’s going to fade – and strength building. You may be able to do something to give you a burst of energy, but it’s not the same as training over time, putting in the time, putting in the effort.

Andrea: Eating the right foods.

Rosanne: Exactly, all of that process. Anything worth building requires time. It just does. Growth is a process that requires perseverance – genuine growth, anyway.

Andrea: Yeah, yeah. Well, our time is about up, Rosanne. I wanted to real quickly reiterate that if anybody is interested in the book that I am the author of, and Rosanne is the editor, it’s Unfrozen: Stop Holding Back and Release the Real You. You can find information about that on our website, voiceofinfluence.net. We also do work with people. We work with companies to help them turn their people into brand ambassadors, to help people connect with the meaning and purpose of the company, the strategic vision and mission of the company in order to sort of activate them as a person who is going to go out and do their best for their company.

When you invest in people, they realize that you care. My mom would always use the quote, and I don’t know who exactly said it originally. I’ve heard Roosevelt, I’ve heard various people saying it originally, but, “They don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.” And this is the truth. I’ve seen it over and over and over again. My mom said it, so you should believe it. And the fact of the matter is that when you invest in people, when you show them how to own their own voice and to find it, to own it, to embrace who they are, to release who they are so that they can use it for all over their lives, especially in your company, they’re going to give your customers better service. They’re going to provide more insight to you as a business owner, as a manager.

You know, people appreciate being invested in and that is what we do. We will help you make sure that your team is truly connected to the vision and mission of your company, that they have a voice of influence with the customers and within your company. So we would love to talk to you about that at some point. Go ahead and, you know, on our website there’s a contact form, fill that thing out and we’ll connect. We’d love to be able to have a conversation.

Rosanne: Absolutely.

Andrea: Rosanne, is there anything that you want to leave with the audience today?

Rosanne: I was just thinking, you know, in terms of how much creativity is released when people know that it’s safe to go there, you know, to not simply show up and check the boxes. But that when they actually have a voice, then creativity begins to flow. Creativity they didn’t even necessarily, perhaps, know that they had. If you want to build a company that’s long-term going to be financially stable and really matters – it does something that really matters – then you want to build a team that works together well, and takes care of one another, and takes care of your customers as well so that there’s loyalty, and we can help you do that.

Andrea: That’s right. And I guarantee you that our team will give our best for yours.

Rosanne: Absolutely!

Andrea: So, I’m very proud of the team that we have and as it continues to grow, as our client base continues to grow, it’s a special thing to be a part of. And so thank you, Rosanne, for being with me today. I look forward to having more conversations with you on the Voice of Influence podcast here in the future.

Rosanne: Absolutely!

Andrea: All right, everybody. Come on over to voiceofinfluence.net and hit that “Let’s Talk” button. We’d love to schedule a conversation. All right, we’ll see you soon.

Posted on Monday, November 18, 2019

Unlock Tangible Business Results While Sharing Your Message with Angelique Rewers

Episode 116

Angelique Rewers is the CEO of The Corporate Agent and she is “the undisputed champion at helping small businesses land big clients” according to Inc. Magazine.

Having successfully navigated all sides of the corporate buying table for two decades, Angelique and her team have taught thousands of small businesses, including mine, across 72 countries worldwide how to secure 5, 6, and 7-figure corporate contracts. Angelique has been featured by Huffington Post, Forbes, Inc., Lucky, Washington Post, Entrepreneur, CBS, and more.

In this episode, Angelique talks about why people feel compelled to listen to her even when they don’t really care about her message, the bullying Angelique faced both as a child and as an adult that she’s had to overcome, how she’s transformed over the past few years to get to a place where she’s not concerned about what others think of her, the importance of realizing that we always have a choice and control over our actions, why business is going to save the world, the importance of fitting your message into a keyhole in the beginning, the advice she has for those wanting to have a voice of influence, and more!

Mentioned in this episode:

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcript

Hey, Hey! It’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast. I am so thrilled to have with us today Angelique Rewers. She is the CEO of The Corporate Agent. She is “the undisputed champion at helping small businesses land big clients” according to Inc. Magazine. Having successfully navigated all sides of the corporate buying table for two decades, Angelique and her team have taught thousands of small businesses, including me, across 72 countries worldwide how to secure 5-, 6- and 7- figure corporate contracts. Angelique has been featured by Huffington Post, Forbes, Inc., Lucky, Washington Post, Entrepreneur, CBS, and more.

Andrea: Angelique, it is so fun to have you on the Voice of Influence podcast.

Angelique Rewers: It’s fun to be here. I know so much about the amazing work that you do in the world, Andrea, and so, it’s genuinely an honor.

Andrea: Well, let me just start by setting it up that I am one of your clients and the reason that is the case is because when I was at a speaking conference, you happened to be there. I had no idea who you were. I didn’t really have any idea of what was going on in the corporate space for speaking. But when I saw you up on stage, I saw somebody that was really powerful, confident, ambitious, and I thought, “I want to hear what she has to say.” So, when you had a breakout session, I went to your breakout session. No interest in your topic whatsoever. It was you that I was drawn to. And I think that that is really significant for our listeners today because I do think that it is like people sort of draw people to themselves.

Angelique Rewers: Yeah.

Andrea: What is your take on that?

Angelique Rewers: You know, we actually hear that all the time. People, at conferences, will say “I had no interest in working with corporate clients. I didn’t think that that was something that I wanted to do. But you maybe had three minutes, Angelique, on the main stage before your session, or you were on a panel before your session and I was going to skip your session and go check email back in my room. But after hearing a few minutes, I had a sit in on your session.”

And so I think there are two lessons in that. I think the first; I mean, this podcast is about the voice of influence. If you want to influence others, you need to have conviction and energy in your message. It’s electric. It’s magnetic. And so people, all the time, they say that they want to hear what I have to say, even if they don’t really give a crap about my topic, because, “You believe in it so much, and there’s just something about it that is inspiring, and I want to be a part of it.”

So, I think if you’re looking to gain influence in the world, you need to not be a wet dishrag. You need to have conviction. You need to have energy. You need to care. There needs to be a fire in your eyes. When people look in your eyes, they need to see that something is going on in there because then they want to be a part of it. Even if they don’t want to be a part of it, they just want to be around you. That’s number one.

The second lesson for me that’s in it is that when you are out, whether you’re on a podcast or you are speaking in an event or you’re writing articles, if what you’re teaching, Andrea, has integrity and truth in it, it can be infinitely applicable to other fields and industries. And so people will come to our session, even if they don’t necessarily want to work with corporate, but they’re like “Angelique, the stuff you’re teaching, I can use it in my business anyway because it makes sense.”

There is a degree of, “Oh my gosh, what this woman is saying is legitimate and it is like a breath of fresh air. So even though I’m not going to sell to corporate, I’m still gonna use what she’s saying in whatever marketing field I’m in.” So, I think if you can make your strategies universal in some ways and then have that fire in you when you’re communicating it, you’re going to gain a lot more influence in your message.

Andrea: All right. So where did that come from for you? What is the fire? What do you really care about?

Angelique Rewers: Yeah, people actually ask me this all the time, and in fact, you and I have both been on podcasts on Mindset and you’ve had Mindset guests on and so this comes up a lot. I think that it’s twofold for me. I do think that people are born with a degree of fire in their belly. So, you know, I was kind of a spitfire at five years, four years old, or three years old. You know, I’ve been a spitfire since I landed on this earth.

Andrea: I could totally believe all this.

Angelique Rewers: So, in kindergarten there was a school play. Now this was when you could still call them Christmas plays. They didn’t have to be sort of like generic, so it was the Christmas play. And so they were having these different parts, and they wanted a few kids from each of the grades. And I went up to my kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Persigan-Risick, and I said, “I want to be the narrator.” And she looked at me and she said, “But Angel, you don’t know how to read.” And I said, “Well, I’ll just learn tonight.” And she was just like, “Uhm.” And so, I’m like, “I want to be the narrator.”

And so she gave me the script for the entire school play and I took it home. And the next morning I came in, and I went to the audition, and I knew how to read the whole damn thing, and I got the part of narrator at five years old of my school play. And I thought I was the shit narrating the school play. Like, I even remember my outfit down to my red velvet skirt, you know. And so there is a part of it that I think you’re born with. But the other part of it comes from finding something that you care about that isn’t manufactured, that you genuinely care about it. And I think for me it’s a confluence of caring about business owners.

I care about people in that I don’t like to see people holding back. I pushed people really to the edge, edge, edge of even beyond their comfort zone because we have one life, so we know. The clock is ticking. It’s almost to me like a football match or something where it’s a game, and the clock is ticking, and it’s like, “Well, you better leave it on the field because that’s it.”

So, I care about just getting people out there and doing something with their life. And the place that I’ve chosen as my inflection point of that is by taking these people who are woke and pushing them kind of to really get out of their comfort zone, go into companies, change companies from the inside out because companies change the world. Not government, not nonprofits, really business is the language of this planet.

So, if I can sort of take this conscious, woke group of people, get them inside these companies, we can really make a difference in this world. And it’s the place that I think my gifts best serve. And that’s I guess the last piece of it. It should be something you care about, but your gifts should align with it. So it’s somewhere you can really make a difference. And for me, I speak the language of sales. I speak the language of marketing, so it’s where I think I can make the biggest difference.

Andrea: Hmm. Okay, I’m going to come back to why you think that companies change the world. But first, let’s stick with the girl that, you know, just learned how to read overnight or memorized or whatever you did to make it happen. As somebody with that kind of ambition that you always had, that’s like a really bright fire. Has it ever been dimmed? I mean, have you ever gone through a point where “Gosh, it was smothered” or you know, you felt like you couldn’t be that person?

Angelique Rewers: Oh, yeah.

Andrea: Okay.

Angelique Rewers: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I’m in middle school, so that was kind of who I was all the way up until the seventh grade. And I know we all kind of have the seventh-grade story. You know, for me in the seventh grade, things were kind of tough at home. My mom and I were living with my grandparents. My mom was trying to save up to be able to buy a home, and so we were living in this really tiny little house. I was sharing a bedroom with my mom. You know, here I am at twelve, I guess, twelve or thirteen, and I’m sharing a bedroom with my mom. Can you imagine like, just remember your twelve-year-old self. We have one bathroom in the house. I mean this is a teeny, teeny, tiny little house.

And I went to a very, very rough middle school, and I was there because, ironically, they had the program for the gifted and talented kids in this particular school, which was one of like the roughest middle schools that there were in the area. So, but I had to go there to be part of the gifted and talented program. So, it was sort of a trade-off. At any rate, the other girls really did not like that bright fire so much. As the expression goes, the tallest nail gets the hammer, and so they actually formed a club called Kids against Angelique Rewers, KAAR.

They had a logo. They had buttons. They had what’s called a slambook, which is where they write horrible things about you. They had meetings. They had a schedule of who would bully me in between each and every class because we would change periods, you know, from science to math. And they would knock me down, they would punch me, they would push me in the lockers, they’d tear up my homework, they would threaten me. At one point, the worst was when I was dragged by my hair in the hallway. I mean, really, really brutal stuff.

And so this went on and on and on and on, and it was really almost a two year kind of situation. It finally came to an end when I finally spoke up for myself, but I was embarrassed to go to the teachers. I was embarrassed to go to the guidance counselors. I hid it from my family. It finally got addressed, but, boy, it stayed with me for a really long time. And it probably took until… it was really in 2009 that I had an adult bullying experience, which by the way, I think adults today are almost worse than middle schoolers.

We have just gotten ourselves into a situation in this world where we just tolerate so much bullying online that it’s just unbelievable. So, anyways, so I had an adult bullying experience, and then I realized I had come full circle. And so in 2010, I decided to kind of step back into the light. So that means that from thirteen until twenty-seven, so fourteen years, I sort of hid, and then you know, around twenty-seven, twenty-eight, I started to come back out again. And then it’s been every year since then, it’s been another step into the light, another step into the light. And in the last couple of years, I really did kind of go through a transformation of “The hell with it, here I am, World.” So, but yeah, it really lasts a long time, Andrea.

Andrea: You know, I have seen that transformation in you in the last couple of years because that’s how long I’ve been around you and your programs. And I was wondering if you would want to tell us a little bit about that. It seems like there’s been this fire that’s been lit under you, that’s even greater and you were already doing so much. You already had such big vision and then something happened or some sort of transformation. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Angelique Rewers: Yeah, I think it was definitely the sort of perfect storm of a few things coming together. You know, one is age, right? So, I’m in my forties now and so you become, I think, just increasingly aware of the speed of time as you get older and you’re watching your kids grow up so fast before your eyes. My twins now are ten. I’m like, “How did this happen?” So there’s definitely the age-time thing. Another piece of it is a couple of years ago, I did do some work, which I recommend that people do, on their shadow side from a mindset perspective. And I did some shadow side work and that was really liberating to just accept all of who you are.

When you really get to the point that you genuinely accept 100 percent of who you are and you connect in with spirit and really everything you do is between you and spirit, whether you want to call it source, God, you know, universe, whatever works for you. When you accept all of yourself, and then you connect into your mission and your purpose, if you believe in that. You know, for me, I do, you’d go “Well, it really doesn’t matter what other humans think about me so much. This is really between me, my soul and God and you know, what I’m doing on that front.” And then the other piece of it is I started to put myself in rooms with people like Richard Branson.

So, I’ve been part of the Virgin Unite efforts. I went to South Africa with Virgin Unite. I went to Sir Richard Branson’s wildlife reserve in South Africa and spent four days with him, you know, on game drives. And then went to Necker Island and heard from people all around the world who are changing the world. We’re not often allowed to mention who was there, but these are world leaders who’ve brought wars to an end. I mean, people literally who’ve brought wars to an end.

And so you put yourself in rooms like that, and you just realize that there’s no difference per se between, I mean, sure everybody has a different talent or a different IQ and et cetera, but at the end of the day, we’re all the same. We all have the same immense, infinite potential. I think that those things all come together and you just, you know, you make a decision of “Am I gonna let the genie out of the bottle or am I not?” And I think that the saddest thing is how many people go to their grave really never even coming close to their potential.

Andrea: Hmm. What do you suppose is that factor that helped you to see that you really wanted, first of all, that there was a genie in the bottle and then second of all, that you were going to release it?

Angelique Rewers: I mean, I have to say, I’m very fortunate because even though I grew up in a very low-income household in a blue-collar town, where most people don’t go anywhere, I had the most loving family, I really did. And my great grandmother, my grandmother and my mother, very matriarchal family and I’m an only child and an only grandchild. And so there was definitely a lot of support for me as a kid to really go for it. My grandmother always said, “Go, go do it. Whatever you want to do, go.” You know, that was always my word, “Go.” And she also really understood some universal laws, even though she didn’t know that they were universal laws.

So, she would say things to me like, “Be very careful what you wish for because in this family we create it overnight.” And so she really understood the power of manifesting and how when we got really clear as women in our family, things would happen. So, I had some of that going on. And I think the other thing, Andrea, is just I think everybody has the ability to make the choice. I mean, I think anybody listening to your podcast right now can go look in the mirror and say, “Am I happy with what I’ve accomplished in my life? Where am I holding back and do I want more?” And that’s really it. I mean, at the end of the day, you just have to kind of go literally have a conversation with yourself and choose.

Andrea: It seems to me that it’s a choice that almost has to be made more than once. Maybe there’s like this really big moment where you choose, but maybe there are successions of choices too. Do you see that for yourself?

Angelique Rewers: Yeah, well, I think what it is, I think, one, there’s the choice. I think, one, there’s a choice of how you just want to show up in life in general. Like, there’s that moment that you make that choice in your life of “I’m going to show up a certain way in life.” But then there are daily choices that we have to make as to whether or not, you know, we’re really going to do it. So, I think there is that sort of like universal undercurrent that’s going on in our life, but then everyday we’re given a choice.

And just in the last week, I’ve had probably four of those choices in just the last week. So, I was in Prague, I was speaking at an international conference. It was a conference that was really five years in the making for us to land one of those speaking opportunities because it’s that competitive to get there. So, we kept applying and kept applying and kept applying.

And so this year it was in Prague. I was thrilled to go and as I was rushing over to the conference center for my session, I wanted to get there for like an hour before, but I was walking over and I could feel like natural nerves. Anytime we speak, we all get, you know, our adrenaline kind of goes… when we are in a heightened state of stress though, we can’t do our best work, you know.

So, I was walking over, and I stopped and I went to the bridge, which overlooked, you know, downtown Prague and there’s those historic buildings, that beautiful scenery. And I just took 10 minutes to get present and ask myself what I wanted my session to be like and how I want it to show up in that session. And I decided I was going to leave it all on the stage, if you will. That this was going to be a session where I could truly enjoy how far I’ve come, being in Prague, being at this conference. And I was just going to really savor the moment.

And so I had that choice in that moment. I had another choice when I was at the airport and by 30 flipping seconds… I mean, I had been traveling for 24 straight hours, it was a nightmare to get back. And I was in New York City. I hadn’t had any sleep the night before. My flight was supposed to leave for San Diego because I was supposed to speak at another conference in San Diego, and by 30 seconds I missed being able to check-in for my flight and checked a bag. And in that moment, I said to the gate agent, “You know what, just give me a ticket to go home. I’m done. I’m so tired, I haven’t slept in 24 hours. I’m done.”

And so she started looking for a flight for me to come home and then it was like, she found something. I said, “You know what, that’s not the right choice. Find me another flight. It won’t be direct, but you know, find me another first-class seat. I don’t care what cities you have to put me through. Get me to San Diego.” But there was a moment of, “I just want to fucking go home because I’ve been traveling for 24 hours. I’m dirty. I’m tired. I’m hungry. I have a migraine. I just want to go home.” And then I was like, “No, I don’t. I want to go to San Diego and a little bit of sleep will fix this. And that’s where I’m supposed to be with AT&T and Comcast presenting at this conference with veterans.”

So, we’re presented with these choices all the time every day. And we’re human, we’re going to have lousy days. So, you just have to constantly ask yourself, you know, what are you choosing.

Andrea: Hmm. Why is business going to change the world?

Angelique Rewers: Well, we’ve seen it ever since the printing press, right? We actually saw it with the Catholic Church and monks who recreated the Bible, which, you know, church really was kind of like the first business, I mean, in terms of organization and organizational structure and, you know, them creating copies upon copies upon copies. And we saw it with the printing press. We saw it with Ford in creating the automobile and how the automobile completely changed our societies, and people moved out of certain areas, and we created suburbs because of that.

We’ve seen it with the internet. We’ve seen it with mobile communication. We’re about to see it again with AI and with autonomous vehicles and frankly, even flying vehicles, we’re starting to see it with drones. You know, business continues to innovate. Those innovations, despite some of the most repressed societies, you know, really the only country that has completely kept out technology successfully really is North Korea. I mean, you know, they’ve done the best job of kind of keeping business out, keeping technology out.

But beyond that, technology and innovation and developments constantly cross, you know, any imaginary border we draw on a map. And it creates connectivity, and it creates a shared experience that just like the written word created shared experience. The automobile created shared experience. The internet created shared experience. Technologies like this are changing the world. So, business creates innovations and innovations change society.

We are in a situation right now where we look at the ethical dilemmas that Twitter and Facebook are facing. We look at the ethical dilemmas that companies like we work are facing. Even, you know, companies in California who are facing these awful fires and how are they going to respond to that? We need to get plastics out of the world. And so how are companies going to respond to that? So, you know, really companies are what make the world go round.

Every single thing that impacts our daily life, there’s a company behind it, unless we’re in some of the most remote parts of the world. So, the more we can shift the thought process and the scarcity mindset that drives so many of these poor decisions that companies make, and in addition to that, most people are employed by companies. And so the way that people feel every day, the World Health Organization declared this year that burnout is a global epidemic. So the world is drowning in burnout, that affects all of us.

So, we have to really make some changes. And the best way to do that is to take people who are really consciously aware and help guide this. And so our mission at The Corporate Agent is to really show people how to do that. But the only way to do it is to actually be able to sell your services, like you have to be able to get into these companies. You can have the best mission in the world. You can have the biggest heart and the most brilliant idea. But if you don’t know how to get to decision makers and get influenced with them and get them to listen to you and buy your products and your services, then you can’t change diddly-squat.

Andrea: Exactly. Totally. I think that that is so important, especially, I know that for a long time I felt like I had a message, and then it became evident that I was going to need a way to fund the message. And that’s what started having me go down the path of business. And actually, honestly what really has been fascinating for me is seeing myself really be able to start to stretch into other areas of myself that I didn’t know I could do, you know, like to be the CEO of a company, to actually build a business, to have people that are on my team and working with me and coalescing underneath of a mission and a vision and making sure that, you know, all those things, I’m like, “Whoa, wait a second, this stuff is really fun. This is good.”

Angelique Rewers: It is fun. It is really fun. And you know, when we build businesses and we build them from the place that you’re building them, you know, that’s also an impact on the world. I think one of the things that’s been amazing about you, Andrea, is that you have a message, and then you realize that you have to find a keyhole for your message, and you’ve been really willing to find that keyhole. You know, there are so many people out there who have a message, but they’re not willing to find a way for that message to fit into the market so that the message can have an impact.

If you’re just shouting out to the world and nobody’s receiving that message, what good is it? And so you have to shape your key to fit a keyhole and then that unlocks opportunity. And it’s this strange paradox because people have a big message and one of the things we do at The Corporate Agent, as you know, is we help them take that big message and actually bring it into just one key that they can unlock a door. Because if you just have this, you know, huge message that nobody knows what to do with, then what good is that?

And you’ve been such an amazing, you know, you really have taken that and run with it. And as a result, companies are benefiting from your message right now. People are benefiting from this podcast that you do and you haven’t lost your message. Even though you’ve brought it into a tangible way for companies to implement, you’re still focused on this voice of influence. And so sometimes when you first, you know, people hear us talk about it, you can even talk to this. Like sometimes it’s like, “Wait, you want my message to fit into this little box,” but only for a short time, only to get you momentum and then you can let the genie back out of the bottle.

Andrea: I think that’s really important. And one of the things that I believe in is that the mission or the purpose that one has is generally something that’s beneath the surface. So, it’s a concept. Like for me, it’s connecting people’s expertise with the need in the world, “Okay, you could do a lot of different stuff with that.” And so that frees me up to be able to say “yes” when you tell me to go in a certain direction and say, “Okay, I will try that because I can trust your expertise, and yet still have it fit within the paradigm of my purpose as I see it.” So, I think that’s really important for your clients because it can easily feel like the purpose has to be a specific thing or a specific teaching, that sort of thing. Do you see that?

Angelique Rewers: Yeah, I do. And I think people are always afraid of sort of losing their purpose when they start making it tangible in the world. And the opposite is true. It’s like when you make your concept of that idea that you’re talking about like, you know, that concept that you have, when you start making it tangible that people can do something with it… it just evolves into something beautiful. But too many people, we call it sometimes loving the baby. Like, they just love the baby so much about this idea that they have, but they don’t know how to then bring that out into the world in a way that actually has an impact, or that people know what to do with it.

We can all be Marianne Williamson, you know what I mean? Most people aren’t just going to be a philosopher, and I think that’s kind of the danger when people have a message, they can fall into the trap of just being a philosopher versus understanding how to actually effect change in the world.

Andrea: Okay, so I had a question for you that, I don’t want to forget to ask this, because it kind of goes back to what we were talking about before, ties into what we’re headed towards. When one sort of steps into the fullness of who they are… okay, that’s the way I put it, the way you put it, what was that… you know letting the light or the genie out of the bottle, when one does that, I think that it can feel like all of a sudden, even in narrowing down your message, it can feel like you’re cutting things out. You can feel like you’re cutting people out.

Angelique Rewers: Yeah.

Andrea: And that can be really hard for somebody that’s particularly sensitive and empathetic. Has it felt like that to you ever, and I mean, does it ever feel lonely?

Angelique Rewers: Well, I think those are probably two different questions. So I’ll take them, you know, maybe one at a time. The first is that when you’re clarifying your message, assuming you want to be a business owner, you want to be an entrepreneur or you’re working in a company that, you know, trying to make headway somewhere. You can certainly try to empty the ocean with a soup spoon but you’re not going to get very far. So, I’m just very pragmatic about the whole thing.

If you look at anybody who’s had a world changing mission, they didn’t start with a world changing mission. Sir Richard Branson is great example. You know, he just decided in the beginning just to change the record industry, right? That’s all he wanted to do was change the record label industry with Virgin Records. And then he was like, you know what, he sold that so he could change the airline industry all because he had a bad day not being able to get a flight somewhere. And so that’s where he started. And now he’s at a point that he can pick up a phone and talk to almost any world leader. He did just pick one inflection point.

Oprah started on the radio in Baltimore where I grew up. She was on the local news WJZ-13. You know, I remember watching her on like 5 o’clock news. That’s where she started. So, you know, I think that we all see these sort of finished products today of these people who are just out there, just so huge, big followings and people aren’t willing to realize that people judge us based on what we’ve accomplished, not on what we dreamed up in our head.

And so you have to have to do stuff, you have to actually make something happen and then you make something else happen and then make something else happen. I’m not very empathetic around this idea of, “Well, I don’t want to cut anybody yet.” I’m like, “Well, do you want your mission out there or not?” Because it’s like, “Do you want to be right about this or do you want to be rich?” And rich in impact, not necessarily rich in money, but do you want to be right or rich? And most people want to be rich with impact, rich with significance, rich with, you know, really having a legacy.

So to do that, you’d have to just be practical about it. It’s like, “Well, get over it,” you know, like, this is what it takes. This is how it works for almost everybody. And then in terms of does it ever feel lonely? I mean, I personally don’t ever feel that my business is lonely or that, you know, I do think that one of the things that people don’t understand about having a successful business, and I can only imagine as you get more and more successful, like I can only imagine… I mean, I’ve spent time with Richard Branson. I’ve seen the people that he puts around him. He certainly doesn’t ever seem lonely.

I think the man probably would love to absolutely have maybe a little bit more alone time than he does. But you know, even he’s part of the Elders and if you don’t know about the Elders, you should look that up. It’s an amazing thing that he put together with some just amazing people on this earth, people like Desmond Tutu and others. But I don’t find it lonely, Andrea, because number one, I have an amazing family. I just have just the most amazing, supportive husband who is my high school sweetheart. We’ve been together more years than we’ve been alive, if that makes sense.

So, you know, over twenty-seven years we’ve been together now. I have two amazing twin boys who are ten. I have a really supportive mom. I have close friends, and I have the most, and I really do believe this, like I have the most amazing community of clients that I think any person out there who’s in the small business space, who has a community of small business owners that they serve, without question. I think I have the most loving, high integrity, heart-centered… I don’t want to use the word loyal but like just the love in our community, the respect in our community.

I think if, there was some tragedy that happened and you know, I lost my home or whatever, I would have hundreds of clients who would be like, “Angelique, come stay on my sofa.” Like, “The door is open,” and I think because they feel the love that we pour into them and how transparent we are with them. And so there’s just like, “I don’t feel lonely at all.” I mean, Andrea, if I felt like I didn’t have somebody to call, you know, I could pick up the phone and you would talk to me. I just feel just constantly, just a bubble of love around me all the time, even if I’m having a bad day. I just have this incredible vortex of love.

Andrea: I can attest to that. I put something in our Facebook group this week. Every once in a while I feel the need to reach out and say, “Oh, hey, does anybody else ever feel like this?” And I had maybe four people reach out to say, “Do you want to talk?” People that really know what they’re talking about and so it’s absolutely true. I think though, at some point, did you ever have to recognize that you are going to be spending more time with this kind of person than people that you were with?

Angelique Rewers: Oh yeah. Yeah.

Andrea: That’s a hard thing for people to kind of move through, I think.

Angelique Rewers: Yeah, you know, I think it is for some people, I’m kind of a loner. I’m an only child and I think that probably contributes to it. And there were no cousins. You know, my mom was an only child, so I was an only child. There weren’t a lot of others around. And I’ve always been kind of a loner in a way, even though I always have like these amazing people around me. So, I’m also a very independent person. I think probably two of my greatest values are independence and intelligence. Like those are two things I value greatly. So for me, I empathize with those who feel that way. I personally didn’t experience it, because I’m actually an introvert, I think.

So, I can imagine that for some folks when they start to change their life, there are people in your life, you really have to, you either distance yourself from where you are or sometimes it’s not even like this conscious uncoupling. It’s just you don’t have as much in common with them anymore. And that’s just a natural part of transition. I mean, we do that our whole life, though. You know, as we grew up, you know, as soon as we get to high school and we look back and the kids we were friends with when we were in elementary school, they’re in the same school, but we don’t talk to them anymore. You know, we change and we evolve.

I think it’s a good thing and I think, as we get older, we get to make decisions about people who are toxic or who are sort of energy vampires and we have to make decisions about that. It can actually be very freeing, like, “Oh my gosh, this is great. I get a choice in this. I don’t have to spend so much time with this person who’s really draining and doesn’t respect, you know, my choices.” So, I think it can actually be really empowering if you choose. Let me say this and then you can ask me another question, but I think that people forget that we have a choice, the emotions that we assign to something that’s happening in our life.

So we can assign that it feels bad to let go of a relationship or we can assign that it feels good and empowering and you know, exhilarating to let go of a relationship. We’re constantly making those choices. We think that we’re just a victim of emotion and that’s not the case. We actually can make choices about what we’re feeling.

Andrea: Hmm. And I think when people have somebody like you to look to who say, “You’re gonna survive, it’s okay. Keep moving. This is sort of the light that you’re moving towards.” I think it’s easier for people to be able to do that.

Angelique Rewers: Yeah, it is. Well, and you know, it’s interesting that you use the word survive because I think that there’s a moment where people who are in business, there’s actually a shift that happens in entrepreneurial maturity where what feels like a survival energy gets replaced by a “Isn’t this journey amazing?” Like, “Isn’t this fascinating what’s happening right now?” And there’s a moment where there’s, sort of, instead of feeling like “I have to survive this,” there’s a new wave that washes over you of, “Oh, I don’t actually have to attach a survival energy to this. I can actually choose that this is exhilarating; strap on my seatbelt, this roller coaster is fun!”

And you’ve seen that picture that I actually show of me on the roller coaster, the ten different times, and how I was on that roller coaster and I was screaming bloody murder and I was having this miserable experience. And then I got off and I saw that picture, and I saw everybody else on the same exact roller coaster having a good time. And I realized in that moment that I decided that I had to survive that roller coaster with my kids. Everyone else chose to strap in and laugh their way through the roller coaster. It was the exact same roller coaster, but I was in survival mode and everyone else was in this sort of exhilarated, “Oh my gosh, the wind is whipping through my hair” mode.

And so really what I would say to people, Andrea, so, I do encourage people that “You are going to make it through,” but more importantly what I want them to hear is that, “Choose it to be a different experience.” You know, choose it not to be survival. Choose it to be like, “I signed up to be an entrepreneur, and I am doing it, and this is amazing. And anybody else would be so scared about this and I am badass, and I’m going to just do it.” And, like, choose that experience. And we get to choose that every day. That goes back to what we started with, which is, you know, it’s constantly that choice of the life experience that we’re going to have. And what I want more than anything I think is for people to be conscious of what they’re choosing.

Andrea: Hmm. I love that. I love it so much. I know exactly what you’re talking about, and I think it’s a hard choice for me personally, I am more empathetic. I do struggle with all these things a little bit more maybe, but I have found the same thing to be true. Okay, so for the listener, you need to know that Angelique, as much as we talked about mindset and experience and influence and that sort of thing, Angelique is really truly an expert in influencing when it comes to sales conversations and business ownership as a small business owner and all those things.

So, Angelique, I know that you have a conference coming up. Every once in a while you do webinars. And if anybody really wants to hear your expertise and see that in play and your strategic mindset play, that is a really great place to see that happen. Can you tell us a little bit about what’s coming up?

Angelique Rewers: Yeah, absolutely. So, our website is thecorporateagent.com and as Andrea said, you know, we’ve been talking in this podcast today about the idea that you can have a big mission and a big message, but there has to be a way that you make it tangible and bring it into the world. And the way that we bring it into the world is by teaching small business owners how to win big clients. And sometimes those are the really big brands like Starbucks, Facebook, GE, Delta, and Bank of America and all of those. And sometimes it’s colleges and universities, or government agencies, or mid-market companies, or even a big small enterprise in your backyard.

And so we teach small business owners how to get in front of those organizations, where to start, what to deliver, and how to close those sales, and how to keep those clients for the long term so that they keep buying from you. So that’s really the tangible way that I bring my message into the world. And so we do, we have some great trainings coming up in early December. We’re going to be doing some complimentary trainings via Zoom online. So, if you go to our website, thecorporateagent.com, if you download one of our resources on there, there some free swipe copy and things like that, then you’ll get on our list and you’ll know about it.

The other thing you need to know about is once a year we do a conference called the Real Deal. It’s three days of us teaching business owners really how to be empowered in their marketing and their sales in the B2B space. If they’re marketing to those B2B clients, those corporate clients. It’s an unbelievable three days, it’s just so full of energy. People leave walking on air because it’s a combination of just so much content. They’re always just like, “This is incredible, this doesn’t feel like a conference; this is like a master’s degree in three days.” But also it’s fun, it’s on the beach in Fort Lauderdale, and the community is unbelievable, and people just feel like “Where is this community been my whole entrepreneurial life?”

So, the event is called the Real Deal and the website is realdealevent.com. You can also get to it through thecorporateagent.com; it says at the top of the page Real Deal. We would love to see you there. People have literally come into that event thinking that they were going to go back and get a job because it just got too hard for them trying to figure out how to make their business work. And they have walked out of there three days later already winning new clients because they knew what they were doing and they were sending emails and getting their business going again.

So it has literally saved people. One person, and I hope to interview him soon, came to me and said, “Angelique, you literally saved my life because I was about to go get a job and I knew that if I got a job…” and he wasn’t being facetious, he said “It was going to kill me. I would have had a heart attack. I was going to have to be on antidepressants. It literally was like going to just ruin my body because that’s how badly I didn’t want to do it. I was getting so overwhelmed with depression, stress and you taught me how to fix it in three days.”

So it’s an amazing event, so if you do sell to corporate clients and you’re tired of trying to figure out these content strategies that were never designed for corporate clients to begin with, come spend three days with us and it’ll change your life. It’ll be the best three days you’ve ever spent at a business conference.

Andrea: I would agree with that. We went to the Real Deal in 2018 and it was electric. It really was. There was, like you said, so much content, but then at the same time being around the people, meeting people and finding out what they’re doing. And so if you are in the space, it’s where you need to be. No doubt about it.

Angelique Rewers: Well, thank you for that. It’s so much fun too, it’s really great. And this year, we’re on the beach in Fort Lauderdale, literally on the beach. So, in June in Fort Lauderdale, it’s absolutely beautiful, and I’m all about energy and environment. Like I have to be in beautiful space, like I’m just so impacted by that. So for us to just find a venue that was so bright and airy, overlooking the ocean, which just felt really good and expansive and, you know, we use the ocean as a metaphor all the time because there is such an ocean of opportunity for people out there. So it just felt very much in alignment.

Andrea: Angelique, what tip or a piece of advice would you like to leave with the listener about, you know, the listener who wants to have a voice of influence?

Angelique Rewers: Say yes, say yes. People say “no” way too often and I know we’re told to say “no” to, you know… and you should say, you know, we all have to set boundaries. You know, don’t take on yet another volunteer project at the school when you’re the only person volunteering for the third grade. But say “yes” to your dream. Say “yes” to your purpose. Say “yes” to the experiences that are aligned with your vision. Don’t say “I’m not ready for that yet.” Take that out of your vocabulary. Never again say, “I’m not ready.” That’s ridiculous. You were literally born ready.

So just say “yes” to things that are aligned with your vision. At the end of the day, that’s the secret of people who are successful. They say “no” to the stuff that is not in alignment and they say “yes” to all the things that are in alignment. And they don’t give themselves these interdependencies, or “I’m not ready” crap and they don’t say, “Well, I can’t do that because…” They say, “How can I make this work?” And they say, “Yes,” that’s what they do. And so that would really be, you know, my final words of advice, start saying “yes” to your vision and show up every day saying, “yes.”

Andrea: Hmm. Let that genie out of the bottle.

Angelique Rewers: Let that genie out of the bottle.

Andrea: I love it. Thank you so much for sharing your voice of influence with our listeners. Thank you for your impact on my life, on my business. I’m truly grateful!

Angelique Rewers: Thank you!

Posted on Monday, November 11, 2019

Navigating the Human Side of Marketing with Vanessa Yeh

Episode 115

Vanessa Yeh has ten years of experience in brand building and integrated marketing. Vanessa is a creative and entrepreneurial storyteller who is passionate about leveraging strategy, creativity, technology, and human connectedness to form a powerful brand story across multiple mediums.

Vanessa previously served as the Vice President of Brand Marketing and Communications at 1871, an internationally recognized incubator for tech startups in Chicago. She is currently the Director of Marketing at Ascent, a high-tech B2B startup serving financial services.

In this episode, Vanessa discusses how losing out on her dream because of a simple mistake led her into marketing, how the storytelling skills she learned working in Hollywood helps in her marketing career, why customer service should be a team effort across the entire company, her advice for adopting this mindset in an organization, why she utilizes “win-lose meetings”, the importance of understanding your co-workers’ struggles and appreciating their work, why we need a diversity of values and opinions in the workplace, her predictions for future trends in marketing, and more!

Vanessa Yeh on LinkedIn

The CliftonStrengths Assessment (Formerly StrengthsFinder)

Transcript

So today we have with us Vanessa Yeh, with 10 years of experience in brand building and integrated marketing. Vanessa is a creative and entrepreneurial storyteller passionate, and I can tell you that’s true. She’s passionate about leveraging strategy, creativity, technology and human connectedness to form a powerful brand story across multiple mediums.

Vanessa is currently the Director of Marketing at Ascent, a high-tech B2B startup serving financial services. And previously, she served as VP Brand Marketing and Communications at 1871, an internationally-recognized incubator for tech startups in Chicago.

Andrea: It’s so good to have you with us on the Voice of Influence podcast, Vanessa.

Vanessa Yeh: Thank you so much,Andrea. I am really happy to be here.

Andrea: So, how did you get into marketing in the first place?

Vanessa Yeh: Actually, for most of my life, my dream was actually to be a movie producer. So, I moved to LA right after high school and I did the whole, you know, I worked on sets. I was an assistant where I did everything from scheduling auditions to helping an actor pack when they were moving house, like all of that, you know, kind of grunt work. It was very Anne Hathaway in Devil Wears Prada, but like without the nice clothes.

Then after some years of this, I finally had gotten anintroduction to Universal Studios forbasically my dream job and then I proceeded to screw it up massively. I ended up mistyping one digit on my phone number so they were calling and calling some other phone for a week before they gave up on me. After that happened, I was just sort of tired, you know, I’d spent six or seven years of sort of being broken, eating ramen and being screamed at by Hollywood producers and you know, to lose outon that major, major opportunity over such a stupid act of self-sabotage, you know. It was tough and I was like, “Do I really want to keep doing this?”

So, sort of on a whim, I startedtemping at a company and that company was SapientNitro, which is a global digital advertising firm. They actually merged with Razorfish a couple of years ago. But that’s kind of where I got stokedon marketing because I found that so many of the things that I loved about theater and film, telling good stories, making an audience feel or respond in a certain way, engaging in this weird two-way relationship where you sort of both implicitly agree that you’re along for the ride, but at the same time it’s like this push and pull, like the constant negotiation for attention. Like all of that, which is so kind of integral to storytelling and theater and film,transposed, I think,right over into marketing.

So, you know, I started doing brand and marketing for a number of startups in LA and then, you know, fast forward quite a few years, Chicago and I ended up at 1871, which was amazing. And then today, yeah, I head up marketing at Ascent, and we servefinancial services. So yeah, in a nutshell, that’s basically how it happened.

Andrea: Wow. That’s really fun, that’s a fun story. I mean, it’s obviously very sad in many ways because a single digit on your phone number would possibly ruin a whole entire direction of your career, but yet maybe gave you an entry path into a new one.

Vanessa Yeh: Absolutely. And I’m actually so grateful that it happened. I mean, I still obviously have a huge heart for kind of the movies and TV and theater, but I am very, very happy where I am. So, I’m actually really grateful that it happened.

Andrea: So how do you see your past working on movies and this idea of storytelling in that regard, really integrated into what you’re doing even today at Ascent?

Vanessa Yeh: You know, it’s interesting because I feel like in the same way when you’re working in film and production and directing, you do so much of everything,and I think that’s translated directly into what I do today. I mean, I would definitely consider myself a marketing generalist. I actually met someone at a dinner just last night who was like, “I don’t like generalists.” And I was like, “Oh, well, so glad we’re seated next to each other then,buddy.”

So, I actually don’t have deep, deep expertise in any one marketing discipline. Instead, I’m fairly dangerous at a lot of things. You know, branding and digital writing, design, web development,and on, on, you know, which as it happens,is I think exactly what’s made me successful as a marketer so far because I have enough knowledge spread out over all of these things that I can basically stand up a marketing function from scratch.

So, I think that is something that I picked up very much from sort of guerrilla theater and guerrilla thumb is you have a hand in managing people and directing and writing and designing things. And you have to be good at kind of all of it in order to make this weird baby that is your film, or your marketing campaign, or whatever the case maybe, actually like breathe life into it, right?

Andrea: Hmm. So when it comes to your customer experience, the digital experience, the marketing that you’re doing, what are some of the successes that you’ve seen or what’s made it a success for you?

Vanessa Yeh: So, in my experience, I find that something that’s really key is creating a culture and expectation internally that customer experience is everyone’s job, right? It’s not just the people in customer support or customer service who are on the phone or emailing with customers the most. It’s everyone’s job.

So, you know what’s interesting about that too is that I was hearing someone speak recently and she said something that really resonated with me, which was that, when you, at a company, at a brand, when you lose a deal, you don’t lose a deal because it was any team’s fault. It wasn’t like the sales team’s fault. It wasn’t product’s fault. It wasn’t marketing’s fault. Typically, it’s because that customer had a negative experience over a number, dozens, maybe even hundreds, of touch points along their journey with you, and that’s what made you lose the deal.

So, this idea being that customer experience isn’t kind of relegated to one silo or one team in the organization, but that it’s everyone’s responsibility, I think has been really critical in creating a successful customer experience team.

Andrea: That makes a lot of sense. But how do you communicate that, how does that get communicated so that everybody is onboard with this idea that everybody has to provide the best experience?

Vanessa Yeh: Yeah, I mean I think it’s hard because it almost has to come from management, you know, that has to be like a top down culture decision, right? And I think it’s so natural for organizations, sort of no matter how big or small they are. I’ve been in big companies and I’ve been in small ones,and organizational silos are always an issue, which is crazy. You think that smaller companies wouldn’t have that problem but they still do. And it really kind of feel like an only, it can only change course on that if, you know, management team is really committed to fostering a culture of sort of cross collaboration.

And I think the huge part of that is ensuring that no person or team is the gatekeeper of customer knowledge. And what I mean by that is that, you know, there are usually individuals or teams within a company who do, like, customer research or user research and then sometimes that information is hoarded, sometimes it’s dispersed or sometimes you have subject matter experts in the team who supposedly are like the voice of the customer and that’s who you go to, right, to learn about the customer.

But in my experience, I feel like we can’t rely on that. You can’t rely on certain people just to be the gatekeepers on knowledge on the customer because everyone comes preloaded with bias. We all do. So I think a really important part of the process is establishing rigor around how we collect customer feedback and insight and how we disseminate that internally. And I think that can really make or break the customer experience overall.

Andrea: What are some of the tactics that you’ve used to collect that data, but also then to kind of distribute it so that everybody’s understanding about, you know, on the same page with it?

Vanessa Yeh: Yeah, I think when it comes to collecting that data, it’s so easy, especially if you’re a small company. Just to sort of ask a few customers, maybe your mom,who knows, maybe your friends, you know, like, “Oh, what do you think about this feature?” “What do you think about this or that?” And there’s just not enough rigor around that process. I think that the ideal situation is you have someone in product or someone in, like, customer research who has an understanding of interview and survey methodology that can actually go out to your customers wherever they are and sort of develop a real process for that.

But if not, like you don’t have those people on staff, I think all of us have access to Google and we can at least do some of that work ourselves. Like figure out what does like good interview methodology look like. How do I, you know, not inject bias into my questions? How do I frame questions so that I’m getting, you know, as objective answers as I can from the customer, because a lot of times the customer doesn’t necessarily know what they want or how to phrase what they really want. It’s up to the interviewer to sort of understand that or gain that from the information that they give us. So there’s that.

And then I think in terms of disseminating it, I mean, there’s a couple of things tactically that we do that have worked so far. I mean, we have something called win–lose meetings, which is kind of a painful process, but super beneficial when we have representatives from product, sales, customer success, and marketing get in a room, you know, once a month and we really perform a post-mortem on why did we win or lose deals these past months. And that, like I said, can be a painful process but really, really valuable. So, and that’s just a couple of things I think tactically that anyone can do.

Andrea: So when you’re in that conversation, who leads that conversation, and how do you handle the tendency or I guess, it’s maybe not a tendency but maybe it’s a temptation to sort of point fingers and blame others or that sort of thing. How does that actual conversation kind of play out?

Vanessa Yeh: Yeah, I mean I think I’m fortunate in the fact that I don’t know…at my current company, I don’t think we have a lot of the finger pointing yet. Thankfully that hasn’t happened, which is great. But I know that that is sort of a constant pressure, especially I think between product and sales because it can feel like they have such different objectives, right? Like sales is trying to go out and sell a dream and create revenue and product is saying, “Well, we can only build so much in this amount of time,” like you stop selling features that don’t exist, right? That’s sort of like a constant battle between those two.

But something that I think we draw on as a company is this really beautiful sentiment of calling ourselves a best effort community. And what I mean by that, when I say best effort community is that a commitment that we make constantly to each other. And that is reinforced and when we talk at our team meetings, when we communicate with each other is that we’re abest effort community. Meaning that we assume that no matter what any of our colleagues does, they’re doing the best they can with the knowledge and information that they have at their disposal at that time.

So that’s just a really important like mindset to have because I think it’s really easy no matter what team you belong to say, “Oh, like that deal didn’t go well.” “You know, it’s Carol’s fault.” Or you know, “That feature is totally bugged out. Kevin messed up on that again.” And it’s usually comes from a place of ignorance or not understanding just how difficult that other person’s job actually is and all the different sort of obstacles theyare contending with to get their work done. So if you come at it from this perspective of actually no, they’re making their best effort with what they have available to them right now, it helps to ease a lot of that tension and develops like a really healthy culture and undercurrent of respect.

Andrea: Is that something that is just sort of is it a value in your company or how does that get communicated? I love it.

Vanessa Yeh: Yeah, it is. I believe that actually originated with our tech team, I don’t know what genius penned that in the beginning, but I think it’s been sort of present at, at least Ascent, for quite a while. And I don’t know that,it’s not like we have it written in big letters on the wall, although I do think that is a great idea. But I think it is reinforced in the sense that people are encouraging to each other. Like in all hands meetings, you know, we’re always encouraged to praise each other, to give respect to each other, to give kudos to each other. And it’s just like constant sort of drum beat of appreciate your coworkers, be understanding and try to learn about (what their tribal about,) what their jobs entail and you know, kind of go from there.

Andrea: Hmm. Cool. All right, so as a marketer you are oftentimes the marketing team is usually in charge of kind of understanding or coming up with the voice of the brand. I’m curious about your experience with that and how that takes place.

Vanessa Yeh: Sure. Well one, if you’re coming into a situation where there isn’t a really strong brand voice or brand aesthetic developed yet and you’re sort of tasked with doing that, it always starts with the customer, right? And this kind of goes back to are you interviewing and surveying customers in a sort of methodical and objective way to understand what their challenges are? What are their fears and motivations, their pain points, what are they scared of? What keeps them up at night?

Like trying to understand and get this really holistic picture of what our customers are dealing with on a day to day basis, that’s going to drive what our brand ultimately looks, feels, and sounds like. Because really when you look at it, you know, you got to come at it from two places, right? Direction one is the customer, you know, what are their desires and needs and motivations. The other side is our product. What does our actual product value? What does it do and how does it solve the customer problem and where they meet that’s the perfect brand, right? So what you deliver has to answer the customer’s need and their desires.

So, for us personally, you know, we know that our customers are risk and compliance officers at banks and other financial firms and they’re really scared of being fined and being held in noncompliance by a big government agency. That’s really scary. So for us, when we think about that, we’re like, “OK, well, that means that our brand needs to reflect a sense of safety, security, want to make you feel safe.” At the same time, we’re also a high tech company operating in a very conservative industry.

So, how do you also kind of impress upon customers, “OK, we’re accessible and we’re safe and we’re friendly, but we’re also, you know, very human. You don’t have to be scared of the technology, technological side of it, right? The robots aren’t coming to steal your jobs. So it’s balancing sort of, again, all of these customer(s)needs with what your product actually delivers.

Andrea: So, you know, with best effort community and things like this that are really important to your company in particular, what is like for you, for an individual as an individual to have a sense of your own purpose or your own things that you really care about,your values? How does that come across in the way that you lead teams and lead the marketing efforts?

Vanessa Yeh: That is such a great question, and honestly something I am still really to figure out. I mean, I think I’ve certainly had amazing bosses who really know how to identify people’s personal values and help them leverage those values to do better work. And I’ve met some people who have this really kind of uncanny instinct for that, right? Like who can zero in on your exact motivations and it’s actually kind of scary how good they are at it. But for the rest of us that hasn’t come naturally.

I think a huge part of it is developing this level of trust with people, where they feel they can share their values in a way that is going to elicit like a nonjudgmental response from you as their boss or their manager. And I think it’s really kind of an interesting concept here because I feel like what we don’t talk about a lot of is, you know, it’s been popular for a while to talk about things like values and impact, passion and purpose.

And I think implicit within these words, there’s this pressure to say that you’re internally motivated by these really lovely things like helping people or making the world a better place. But what if you’re working with someone or you have someone in our team who’s like their honest to God value is like they want to make money, wealth, right? Or some other non-feel-goodytype of things, you know. Do we only invest in people who have more sort of feel good values or values that align very, very closely with ours? And I think my answer to that is no, (you’re right).

I think when we talk about things like diversity, which is obviously very important, we don’t mean just diversity like gender, racial associated, economic diversity, but also like diversity of thought and diversity of how different people approach the world. So, it’s really interesting when you think about figuring out what your teams like really their personal values are, even if they’re different from yours. And then leveraging them in a way that makes them be better at their jobs. And like I said, I think it’s something that I’m still trying to figure out. I don’t have like a super solid, “This is what you should go do and that’s the playbook.” I think it’s just a process of learning.

Andrea: Hmm. Yeah, I think that’s a really interesting point because there are people certainly that are motivated by wealth, by money, by success and climbing a corporate ladder or whatever it might be. And that’s certainly important when you are building a company because you certainly have to make money in order to continue the company and to have it be profitable and that sort of thing. So, how do you kind of navigate the relationship between people who are really motivated in one way or versus motivated inothers? It really is an interesting question.

Vanessa Yeh: Yeah, it really is. And I think a part of that, you know, there are so many different sort of exercises, team exercises that are available out there. Like StrengthFinders is a really common one. There’s a bunch of other ones as well, but I think they’re super valuable for a team leader to actually do with their team on a regular basis because it helps us understand each other,like what our different strengths and weaknesses are and how we complement each other in a team.

And again, I think sometimes it’s just really easy to assume that because someone doesn’t have the same values as you or they work in a different style than you do that somehow that’s going to clash. But it doesn’t have to, right? And this is when we talk about, you know, when we interview for things like culture fit, like what does that really mean and should we really be thinking about, “OK, it’s not cultural fit, it’s culture add”, right? We don’t want 15 people who approached the world the way I do, right? There’s enough in me already. I need a team that approaches the world very, very differently than I do because that’s going to increase the chances that we can hack a problem in different ways and solve it faster and better. So I think having a constant appreciation for sort of that process.

Andrea: I think that’s a really, really important point. Just the point that you brought up earlier about having a diversity of value and(it)diversity of opinion,of course,is so important to moving a company forward and to be able to tackle problems like you said. So, I really like that. So, you know, when you’re looking at the future here in the next couple of years maybe, what kinds of things are you looking at as a marketer when you’re seeing AI become a bigger deal and customer experience is just really, really hitting its stride in terms of how much it’s being talked about and that sort of thing? What kind of things do you think are coming down the pipe in terms of changes or trends?

Vanessa Yeh: Yeah, I mean, this stuff is wild, Andrea. We’re living in a crazy world. I’m really interested to see how,kind of what we call the age of assistance, how that’s going to impact how brands interact with consumers. So, you know, when I say age of assistance, you know, I’m talking about, you know, that you can kind of turn to Google Home or Alexa or Siri, right? And they can do all these different things for you, and today you can ask Google Assistant or Alexa to, for example, buy things from Amazon for you, right? Like, you know, shop this and they’ll actually buy it for you and deliver it to your door.

And I recently saw a Google demo of the Google Assistant actually calling a hair salon and scheduling a hair appointment for someone. And the Google voice, the actual voice was like a real human voice. And the person at the hair salon didn’t even realize they were talking to a robot the whole time.

Andrea: I’ve seen that same… yeah, I’ve seen that too. That’s crazy.

Vanessa Yeh: It’s fascinating, yeah! So, you know, I’m just thinking, you know, as assistants become more and more capable of serving as a proxy and interfacing with the world on our behalf, how will that change how we market, right? Even when you think about social media these days and how many accounts are actually botsand how that impacts how we target audiences. You know, arethese even real humans that we’re talking to? I’m just super fascinated to see how the age of assistance really shapes the way we change our strategies to actually meet customers where they are versus talking to their robot assistants.

Andrea: Oh yeah. You know, one thing that comes to mind though, when I’ve been paying attention to some of these trends that are coming, I start to question how many of these algorithms and things are going to start making decisions for us. And you mentioned the age of assistance, Google Home, Alexa, that sort of thing. You know, Alexa already knows what I want from Amazon and can order it for me or whatever. I mean, at what point do we get to a point where, things are making kind of a decision for us and we have to be on the corporate end of things making sure that people understand their own agency, their own ability to make decisions for themselves and things like this. Are you with me on my, my topic here?

Vanessa Yeh: Totally, 100 percent. I think it’s such an interesting question to be asking and it’s so relevant for these days. And I often questioned too with sort of the cyber security concerns, right? You know, we’ve talked about there’s so much activity on like hacks, and Cambridge Analytica, and Facebook and Google stealing your data. All this kind of different stuff that we just don’t have control or visibility or agency with our own information, and our own digital fingerprints and footprints. It’s areally interesting thought to see.

I’m always just sort of curious as to whether the generations that are really young now who are sort of growing up with these machines in their hands. Is the pendulum just going to swing totally the other direction,andthey’re just going to abandon some of these technologies just out of frustration and sort of a revolting kind of against the control that technology has over their lives? I don’t know. It’s a really interesting question.

Andrea: It is. That is really interesting. I’ve got a couple of them in my home and I wonder about that too. It’s interesting watching them for sure.

Vanessa Yeh: Yeah.

Andrea: OK, so Vanessa, it’s kind of time to start wrapping up our conversation. So, I’m really kind of curious bringing it back to influence and being a voice of influence. What kind of tips or what kind of final tip would you leave with the audience?

Vanessa Yeh: I would say that there are, just to keep in mind, there are so many different ways to influence, and by the way, I’m still again learning and figuring this out for myself. But it’s this idea, right, that you can influence by having swagger and confidence and owning the room. But you can also influence by being the person who speaks very rarely, but when you do it super meaningful and kind of everything in between, right?

And so leading into whatever that is for you, instead of just trying to replicate what people around you are doing. At the same time, and this is going to sound a little bit contradictory and, again, that’s because I’m in the midst of figuring this out for myself, that while you want to lean into your own style, you also don’t want to rope yourself off. Like I feel like I went through a phase where I just decided that I was terrible at small talk and I didn’t like it anditkind of my shtickwas sort of this grumpy misanthrope who avoided parties. And I kind of convinced myself that that’s who I was and I’m pretty sure I’d locked myself out of some really amazing relationships and opportunities because I constrained myself in this little box.

But ultimately, I think that we can be whoever we say we are in our minds. And it’s kind of balancing that with like owning and appreciating who you are, like your own style and kind of what you bring to the table, but also not putting yourself into a box and saying, “Well, I am just this thing. I can only ever be this thing,” I think is what I would kind of leave with everyone.

Andrea: Very, very wise words. Thank you so much, Vanessa! How can people connect with you if they’re interested in following you?

Vanessa Yeh: Yeah, for sure. So I’m on LinkedIn. It’s just Vanessa Yeh. I think I’m the first one on there,no crazy numbers or letters after it,so that’s pretty cool. I’m happy to connect.

Andrea: Awesome! All right, we’ll link to that in the show notes too, to make it easy for folks. So, thank you so much for being with us today, Vanessa, and for being a voice of influence for our listeners.

Vanessa Yeh: Thank you so much, Andrea! I enjoyed it a lot.

Posted on Tuesday, November 5, 2019

How Different Generations Influence One Another at Work with Porschia Parker

Episode 114

Porschia Parker is the founder and CEO of Fly High Coaching and the Millennial Performance Institute. She is a Certified Professional Coach, an Associate Certified Coach, and Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Certified Practitioner. Porschia also has experience as a director and business consultant helping companies unlock millions of dollars in potential. Porschia has a B.S. in Psychology from the University of Georgia and she serves as a Career Contributor for BioSpace and has been featured in FlexJobs, Levo, iOFFICE, and the Rochester Business Journal.

In this episode, Porschia talks about the main differences between the different generations in the workplace today, what companies can do to help millennials stay longer than the average of three years, the importance understanding the backgrounds of the different generations you’re working with, why you need to listen more than you talk in order to get your ideas heard, what we can likely expect from generation Z employees once they enter the workforce, and so much more!

Millennial Performance Institute

Fly High Coaching

Glassdoor

Harvard Business Review | Are Companies About to Have a Gen X Retention Problem?

Transcript

Hey, Hey! It’s Andrea and welcome to the voice of influence podcast, where we explore the intersection of human dynamics, communication, and service. If you’re interested in growing your own voice of influence or the influence of those on your team, check us out at voiceofinfluence.net and connect to us to talk. We love talking.

So, today, I have with me Porschia Parker. Porschia is the founder and CEO of Fly High Coaching and the Millennial Performance Institute. She is a Certified Professional Coach, an Associate Certified Coach, and Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Certified Practitioner. Porschia also has experience as a director and business consultant helping companies unlock millions of dollars in potential. Porschia has a B.S. in Psychology from the University of Georgia and she serves as a Career Contributor for BioSpace and has been featured in FlexJobs, Levo, iOFFICE and the Rochester Business Journal.

Andrea: Porschia, welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.

Porschia Parker: Thank you so much for having me, Andrea.

Andrea: All right, so a Porschia and I met each other at an event about a year and a half ago. When thinking about what kinds of things we wanted to tackle on the Voice of Influence podcast, we have certainly address this before, but generational communication and influence, I think it’s a really interesting thing for us to talk about intergenerational. And Porschia is particularly adept and experienced in helping companies really be able to understand the millennial generation and how to talk intergenerationally. So, Porschia, let’s talk just first what are some of the main differences that you see between the generations that are in the workplace today?

Porschia Parker: Yeah, great question, Andrea. So, I guess if we’ll start with millennials, because you know that’s what I am obviously, you probably picked that up from the millennial performance Institute. When it comes to illennials, talking about millennials is kind of become a hot topic within the last few years or so. And, you know, all of these buzzwords, Gen X or baby boomer really kind of commonplace now, but when we think about some of the differences, millennials really value authenticity and having a connection.

And I know you’re all about, you know, the voice and how different people influence each other throughout the organization. And this is really different when it comes to talking about authenticity and a connection, because in the past if we look at other generations, we’ll say baby boomers for example and authoritative management style is what, you know, was commonplace when they were, you know, first coming into the workforce. And that’s what they are more accustomed to. Meaning, “Hey, I’m the CEO, I’m the executive, I’m the manager. You listened to me. It’s very directive. I tell you what to do.”

Millennials are a little different. They feel like in general, and you know, we’re using generalities here. There are obviously exceptions to all of these rules, but in general, a lot of millennials aren’t as preoccupied with some of those established titles and structures. And they believe that they should have a voice like everyone else. And Gen-Xers that I didn’t touch on, they’re the sandwich generation in between millennials, but right after the baby boomers, they’re generally seen as more of the long ranger type, adaptable to different types of environments.

But when it comes to sheer number, a lot of times people kind of forget to talk about Gen-Xers because there’s a smaller population of Gen-Xers in the workforce. So that’s, I think, kind of just high level a little bit about the different generations and when it comes to communication, there might be some noticeable differences there.

Andrea: I found that that interesting when you mentioned baby boomers and talking about the authoritative management style. My interpretation of some of the conversation that I have heard around this intergenerational communication is that baby boomers tend to be almost a little afraid or maybe even Gen-Xers a little afraid of the millennial generation. Almost like they’re the crazy teenagers that adults are afraid they can’t control.

Porschia Parker: Yeah. I think that’s very accurate. And I have obviously worked with a lot of baby boomers and Gen-Xers around coming up with a strategy. For example, one of the most common ones is an employee engagement strategy to kind of curb some of the turnover that’s common with millennial employees. And yes, you’re right, the idea of, “Hey, let’s wrangle them in,” so to speak and kind of get them in line and in control so that, you know, business can go on as usual.

Andrea: OK, so is that effective? Is it effective to try to control them?

Porschia Parker: It depends on your definition of control.

Andrea: Sure.

Porschia Parker: But in short, I would say no. A lot of millennials like I mentioned that authenticity, they want to be a part of the conversation, they want transparency. It’s a very big thing that I know you cover some times. So, really the whole hard line and to try to control them usually does not work. Across the board, across generations, the tenure and, you know, time that people are employed has drastically reduced. Most people in general, newly hired employees are going to work for their organizations for about three years at this point. And so, a lot of times, you know, trying to control certain things only speed up that process in terms of employees exiting your organization.

Andrea: In your experience then is there a way or is there a successful sort of tactic or type of culture that tends to keep millennials longer than three years at a time?

Porschia Parker: Yeah, there are a few things that companies can do. So, really promoting collaboration and so working in small groups. A lot of millennials were used to working in teams and in groups, you know, from elementary school. So, having a more collaborative communication style, some companies, and you might see this, they have completely revamped their workspaces. There’s an organization that I’ve, you know, done some podcasts for and they’re all about kind of this actual physical space that you work in. So, more open environments, free flowing.

You probably have seen some of the offices now that don’t even have dedicated offices. It’s like you come in and you work from wherever. And all of that helps to kind of promote collaboration across different teams in different business functions. So that’s one thing. But also in general, a lot of millennials are looking for mentoring and coaching and when that professional development is provided by the employer that improves employee engagement and the length of time that a millennial employee will stay with their organization as well. Because they feel as though, you know, the company is really investing in them in their career growth and that’s important for most millennials as well.

And then also, the other main component to this is to have access to professional growth opportunities. And it’s funny, Andrea, I was actually reading a study last month and I wrote an actual newsletter article on it for our audience, and it was looking at the professional growth of millennials in terms of rates of promotion versus Gen-Xers. And what it showed was millennials have a really high, they place a high priority on being promoted and that we can talk a lot about, but student loan debt, coming of age in the recession, and all of these sorts of things have kind of driven millennials to focus on finances and getting promoted and making more money so to speak.

So, if you promote from within and have opportunities for that that’s going to be really appealing to millennials. But in the study I was telling you about, they were showing that now a lot of baby boomers actually are not retiring. A lot of them are continuing to work well into their 60s and beyond. And so what this has created is an environment where the baby boomers, a lot of them are still executives, they have not retired and don’t plan to retire. The millennials, because they’ve gotten a lot of, you know, some people think attention and focus, they’ve been promoted at rates faster than Gen-Xers.

And so a lot of Gen-Xers even in the last two to three years have not been promoted at the rates that millennials have. And so this study was really interesting because it was kind of looking at, you know, the interplay between all of the generations in the workforce, what’s going on and you know, just kind of really analyzing it.

Andrea: Hmm. That’s really interesting. Do you mind sharing with us the resource where you got that article?

Porschia Parker: I can, I don’t want to say the wrong thing. So can I…

Andrea: We will just include it in the show notes.

Porschia Parker: Exactly. I will definitely send it to you right after the call. I don’t want to quote the wrong thing.

Andrea: Perfect. No problem. So when it comes to baby boomers, Gen-Xers wanting to have influence on millennials, wanting to have them, you know, whether it be a stay in the environment or change the way that they’re handling things, how does somebody who comes from a different kind of really culture almost, it’s almost like a whole another culture that baby boomers grew up in versus the millennial generation. So when you’re coming from that so much of a difference there, be able to kind of like grapple with the fact that it’s not about what a millennial should be but about what they are and now I have to deal with that. It just seems like that might be part of the issue that people are kind of grappling with.

Porschia Parker: Right, right, very good point. I think it comes down to understanding and understanding that others are coming from a different perspective, perhaps a different background, different environment. And when you understand the environment that, you know a potential employee or subordinate is coming from, it’s easier to be able to relate and find some common ground with them.

A lot of it I think is mindset, like you were saying before, if someone just comes at it from the perspective of, “Oh, this is a rowdy teenager or this person is like my kid,” because you know, a lot of millennials are actually the older ones are in their mid 30s at this point. And so, you know, we still have baby boomers that are, “Oh, that’s like my kid. That’s like my daughter’s age,” even though this person is, you know, 35. So, I think really understanding the environment.

One easy way to kind of do that at a high level is to think when they study generations, most generations are defined by some piece of technology. So for baby boomers, that piece of technology was the television. The television was new. People were, you know, exploring, you know, all of the shows and that was a new mode of disseminating information.

Gen-Xers were defined roughly by the computer. So, you know, Silicon Valley, the computer is the new thing, you know, understanding how computers can really help you throughout your life. Millennials, their piece of technology that they’re mostly defined is the internet. And so, you know, the speed of the internet, the connection so to speak virtually, those different aspects of the internet when we think about millennials and some of their preferences, it actually defines a lot of things about them.

So, for example, sometimes people say, “Oh my gosh, they want everything so fast.” I partnered with a lot of people in recruiting and one thing I hear a lot is of is, you know, in an interview, this millennial candidate that I put in front of a client said, “Well, hey, can I become a manager in two years?” You know, almost kind of expecting that speed of the internet, right, to kind of translate to other areas of their career and of their life. So, just at a high level, if we think about environmental changes being different, technology being different, I think that is one way to start framing the conversation of kind of understanding how people come from, you know, different backgrounds in what was influential to them and how that might affect their decision making moving forward.

Andrea: When you’re looking at how to help people from different generations communicate with one another. You know, let’s take the millennials perspective; you’re wanting to be promoted, you’re wanting to push an initiative through that you’ve see is really important. What kinds of things do you encourage them to do in order to speak to these other generations and potentially have influence?

Porschia Parker: Yeah, great question. So, this is actually the same thing that I encourage everyone to do, millennials included. I think listening more than you talk, especially in the workplace, is going to help you get so much more insight into other people. And I think, you know, you’re specialists in this, Andrea, but I think a lot of times people are so focused on getting their point across, you know, staying their piece, so to speak, that they aren’t really aware of the other perspectives and other, you know, differing points of view or ways of doing things.

So, the first thing that I recommend for millennials but also anyone is to listen more. If you have an idea that you think could improve efficiency or productivity in some way, listen. Ask some questions about why the current status quo is what it is and take some notes and be open, because sometimes people are also listening with the perspective of “Oh, this is dumb or this is stupid. I could do it better.” And after that, you know, introducing your new idea in a way that doesn’t necessarily kind of cut down or demean, you know, how the current process is.

So, a lot of times with millennials, they could sometimes, you know, not be as open to, you know, the previous way of doing things and just come in quickly and think that they know better. And so that’s I think one thing that could really be highlighted.

Andrea: But really it sounds like you’re talking about genuine curiosity.

Porschia Parker: Yeah, absolutely.

Andrea: Because if somebody is genuinely curious, they’re going to be open to having that conversation to, you know, listening and introducing an idea that is potentially disruptive, but in a way that will maybe be based on the listening that you have just encouraged them to do, maybe then they can frame it in a way that they look, I see where it, why you’ve done it like this in the past, but maybe in the future. This is another perspective. I love that. OK, so that’s from the millennial perspective. Let’s look at this from a Gen X or the baby boomer perspective, even if they’re the same two things that you would have them do, how does that look different for them?

Porschia Parker: Yeah. So this, you know, actually I think is a good, I could incorporate a good story here, Andrea. So, when I originally started my business, I was working with mostly individuals and a company that I’d worked with previously for a consulting firm. They asked me, “Well, hey, do you do coaching and consulting for companies?” And I said, “Sure!” And jumped right in and did a time management workshop for them. But while I was in right after that workshop, I’d say, I started picking up on it during the workshop.

But after the workshop, one of the managing partners pulled me to the side and he was a Gen-Xer or is a Gen-Xer or I should say and he starts venting to me about a millennial employee. And this particular employee had gone on Glassdoor and had given the firm one of those average types of ratings on Glassdoor. He was able to figure out who it was and he was shocked because he said, “You know, Porschia, I see this employee multiple times a week. She’s never said any of this to me. She’s never said any of this to her direct manager. How does she feel comfortable just putting this online?”

This was probably in about 2014 so this was a while ago. Glassdoor wasn’t as, you know, big as it is now, but that was really kind of my light bulb moment, Andrea, when I noticed that one, you know, kind of these differences in opinion were really along generational lines but also how the communication was different. So this Gen-Xer, who was firm managing partner, he would’ve never gone online and communicated something to strangers right out on the internet and felt comfortable doing that. But the millennial employee did and had never discussed it.

And so he thought it was kind of like a violation of trust that instead of speaking with him and the rest of the management team, they would go and put this online. And so I think that’s a good example to kind of highlight preferences and communication, one, but also how different things can possibly be addressed. So when it came to that firm particularly, you know, it was kind of touchy because as with Glassdoor, a lot of it is anonymous. So, you know, confronting someone like, “Hey, I know you did this and I know you put this up there online about us,” could be really accusatory and come across, you know, pretty negative.

But in that case, and in most cases, I like to say that those types of instances let you know that people have opinions and they don’t feel comfortable sharing them in a public forum, so really looking at communication between management and their direct reports. Openness throughout the organization are really important, so maybe that’s an opportunity to change your performance review system or change the amount of communication that manage _____ with their team.

Maybe they should be having one on one meetings or phone calls with their team members just to kind of see how things are going. Or perhaps more company-wide meetings if it’s a smaller company to where it’s a literal open forum where people are encouraged to speak up in front of a group. You know, it could look different depending on the size of the organization and how it’s structured. But I think that that’s honestly kind of a cry for someone wanting to be heard, wanting to be listened to and just going in their preferred way of doing that, which can be different among generations.

Andrea: Hmm. It sounds a little bit like, you know, by providing those ways of coming to talk to the management or the leadership that it’s giving them permission. It’s saying, I really do want to hear from you and I’m not only going to say that I’m going to provide you the opportunity instead of expecting you to take the initiative to do it, which might be kind of difficult to do, but it sounds like it’s really, really helpful when it comes to some, a millennial deciding, “Well, am I just gonna post this on Glassdoor or am I going to go actually have a conversation with somebody who really seems like they care.”

Porschia Parker: Exactly.

Andrea: Have you in the course of all this work that you do with intergenerationally, and I know that even though you’ve focused on millennials, do you have any insights into the next generation that’s coming up, Gen Z?

Porschia Parker: Yes. So there’s a lot of study going on about Gen Z. The people who do a lot of the generational research, they tend to make a lot of observations until the generation kind of comes of age. And so prior to that, a lot of it is fluid. So we’re talking about a lot of, you know, preteens and younger and then some teenagers as well. So, there’s still kind of, you know, forming their opinions and their preferences. But yes, in general, they’ve done a lot of comparisons between Gen Z and the millennial generation and there are, you know, some similarities and some differences.

Obviously, the technology piece is that been even more I guess integrated into the lives of those individuals that are Gen-Zers in terms of, you know, the whole idea of having to wait for something is foreign. I saw something not too long ago, but even with Gen-Zers, those teenagers, you know, working to get their license, it’s a lot lower because some Gen-Zers say, “Well, why do I need a license? There’s Uber for that. There’s Lyft for that.” “Why do I need to drive a car?”

Andrea: There will be cars that will drive themselves here in two years.

Porschia Parker: Exactly. So that whole mindset is a little different, you know, having things on demand. Who needs to walk out and go get your own takeout, someone will bring that to you. So, a lot of things in terms of speed are actually seen as faster and more instant than millennials. And I’ve also read something more recently that said Gen-Zers tend to be even more financially conservative than millennials because they’ve seen the millennials to, you know, student loan debt is a huge issue and a driver for a lot of things.

So a lot of Gen-Zers are wondering, do I really even want to go and get saddled with all of this student loan debt from college in that traditional education model. So yeah, there are a lot of comparisons and contrast being made right now.

Andrea: It’s really fascinating. I mean, I have a couple of them in my house, so I understand. So I’m going to ask a couple more questions, but this is one of the last one I promise. I just feel like we could talk about this for a long time. Is there a forum, like an online forum in which you recommend that people communicate with millennials and even Gen-Zers, but in particular millennials, to kind of be able to close feedback loops quicker because it sounds like part of the problem could be, “I’m really busy.” “I’m an executive, I’m really busy.” Or “I’m a leader.” “I’m a team leader. My team is having a hard time hearing back from me.” They don’t like the fact that they have to wait for answers, but they also maybe need answers quickly. Do you have any practical tips on how to handle that?

Porschia Parker: Yeah, I think a lot of it also depends on the organization and kind of _____, you know, what that set up is like in general. And you made me think of another distinction that a lot of companies are having to make, but a lot of people have like, you know, instant messenger kind of chat options in their CRM systems, customer relationship management systems. There other kind of internal systems have some type of chat feature as opposed to email.

And so I’ve heard a lot of companies have, you know, conversations on what should be an email versus what should be a chat or casual communication avenue. But yeah, there are a lot of, you know, just for lack of better words say chat or instant messaging platforms that can help you kind of get answers quicker than an email or waiting for a meeting or things like that.

I would say though, I think if someone has a feeling or a suspicion that something is going on in person or having a virtual meeting where you’re using, you know, your camera through your computer, I think there’s still a lot of value in that just to see people and to get a feel for what’s not being said, right? And that made me think of something else. And another critique that I hear a lot of times from recruiters and managers is they sometimes feel like the millennials have trouble with the in person communication. They’d prefer to just chat or text or email because it might feel safer for some of them who haven’t done as much communicating in person.

And so when I work with millennials, specifically, sometimes we talk a bit about the in person communication and being more comfortable with having conversations that might be considered difficult in person. So I know I kind of added a little bit there, but it made me think of a few other things.

Andrea: Yeah, no, it’s very important. Thank you. What is one final sort of tip that you would like to offer for intergenerational communication influence in particular?

Porschia Parker: Yeah. I think starting with a level of respect and it sounds really basic and almost kind of like “Hey doesn’t everyone do that?” But they don’t. And similar to what I was mentioning about listening, coming from a perspective where you are respecting people, whether they be 30, 40 years older than you or 30, 40 years younger than you is really, I think, the place that everyone can start. And also knowing that, you know, yes, we’ve talked a bit about generations as a group and as a whole, but everyone’s not the same. Just because someone is, you know, 68 doesn’t mean that they can’t use technology. And you know, just because someone is 28, you know, doesn’t mean that they know everything about all social media channels. So, I’m not necessarily generalizing to the point where you think you’ve got it all figured out.

Andrea: Hmm. Very good Porschia, if somebody wanted to get in touch with you, how, how should they do that?

Porschia Parker: Yes. So, we’ve got actually two websites you can check us out if you want specifically to know more about the millennial aspect and focusing mostly on intergenerational communication. Our website is millennialpi.com. And also our other website is fly/highcoaching.com. You can find information about us on both of those platforms.

Andrea: Great. And we’ll make sure to link those websites into our show notes on our websites. So, Porschia, thank you so much for coming here today and sharing your voice of influence with our listeners.

Porschia Parker: Thank you so much for having me, Andrea. I really, really enjoyed chatting with you.

Posted on Monday, October 28, 2019

How to Build Credibility to Advocate for a Big Idea Heather Hansen

Episode 113

Heather Hansen has her psychology degree and spent 20 years as an award-winning trial attorney and is a trained mediator. She has appeared on NBC, Fox News Channel, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, and Sirius Radio. She has presented in Kuwait, Ireland, Mexico, and throughout the United States. Heather is also the author of the bestselling book, The Elegant Warrior: How to Win Life’s Trials Without Losing Yourself, and is the host of the podcast, The Elegant Warrior. In this episode, Heather talks about her journey from being a trial attorney to where she is today, the difference between communicating and advocating, why you need to hire yourself as your own advocate, the value of owning your mistakes when it comes to building your credibility, how to build credibility when you’re in a position of power, how to build credibility when you’re not in a position of power, and more!

Mentioned in this episode:

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Transcript

Hey, Hey! It’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast, where we’re going to explore the intersection of human dynamics, communication, and service. If you’re interested in growing your own voice of influence or the influence of those on your team, check us out at voiceofinfluence.net and contact us to talk. I always love hearing from listeners. Today, we have with us Heather Hansen, you know, facts tell and stories sell, but advocacy wins. So, Heather has her psychology degree and spent 20 years as an award-winning trial attorney and is a trained mediator. She has appeared on NBC, Fox News Channel, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, and Sirius Radio. Heather has presented in Kuwait, Ireland, Mexico, and throughout the United States. She is the author of the bestselling book The Elegant Warrior: How to Win Life’s Trials without Losing Yourself. I love the title, and is the host of the elegant warrior podcast.

Andrea: Heather, it is wonderful to have you here with us today on the Voice of Influence podcast.

Heather Hansen: Andrea, I’m so excited to be here. I love your podcast.

Andrea: Oh, thank you so much. I’m excited to talk to you because your book is so good. I’m going to tell you this just to start with, I really love the fact that your chapters are bite-sized and then it gives people a chance to really just kind of sink their teeth into it real quick, take a bite and then know how to move forward. So congratulations on your book!

Heather Hansen: Thank you so much! That was on purpose. I really wanted people to be able to open to one chapter, maybe read it before they head out into their day and have it as a little tool with them all day long.

Andrea: I love that. I think calling those little chapters tool is a really good way to put it. That really makes sense. So, Heather, tell us a little bit about your experience in being a trial lawyer and how you came to where you are today?

Heather Hansen: Oh boy! So, I have been at the same firm since I was in law school and I have had the fortune to represent tons and tons of doctors and nurses and people who work in hospitals when they’re sued by their patients. And that work has been rewarding but also extremely upsetting, very emotional, and very stressful.

And I learned pretty quickly the difference between communicating and advocating. I love communicating. I started college thinking I was going to be a journalist and I majored in communications law, economics and government. But when it comes to winning, you know, communicating is defined as sharing ideas. And that’s great for relationships. It’s great for teaching, it’s great for journalists, and it’s great for psychologists, which is ended up being my major.

But when it comes to advocate to win, you have to publicly support your idea and you have to advocate for it And I found in all of the years of teaching my clients how to speak to juries in a way that we could win, that I was teaching them how to advocate. And I found that I could use that skill outside the courtroom as well.

So now, I do work with CEOs, venture capitalists, environmentalist, and all kinds of people who have a big idea and they want to find a way to advocate for it. And the book was really meant as, you know, as you mentioned, bite-sized tools that if you don’t have me in your pocket, perhaps these tools will help you be a better advocate for your big idea without me there.

Andrea: Hmm. And do you find that people who do have a big idea that there are times when they struggle to actually own it publicly, I guess, to stand up for what it is that they’re trying to advocate for?

Heather Hansen: Yes. It’s so funny because there’s sort of two things there. One is to have the confidence and the trust in your idea and your knowledge to actually do it. And then the second part becomes how do you do it, and I train people on both because first you have to know how important it is to use your voice and you have to be reminded that this idea, sometimes, especially, women were more likely to do things for other people or other things.

So, sometimes when I remind people that this idea is a thing that needs you to stand up for it, they find it easier than thinking that it’s them putting themselves on the line. And then once people are OK with stepping into being an advocate, then we can get to the “how do you use your voice?” “How do you use the tone of voice?” “How do you use your body language, or which questions to ask?” But sometimes, Andrea, your point is very good one. Sometimes the hardest part is for people to step into the role of advocate with confidence and with strength and with a true knowledge that what they’re doing is to promote that idea.

Andrea: Why do you suppose it is so hard?

Heather Hansen: I think that we doubt ourselves. Oftentimes, we don’t know that we are the right person to do that. We think that there’s someone better suited for the job and there’s not. One of the things that I really work hard with my clients, on and also I do a lot of speaking to women and to children, because I think that we often say, “Well let me find somebody else who could do it.”

And you know, I know that even in my job there’s a lot of times where I’m like, “Well, if I could just hire someone to do my sales or hire someone to promote me.” But truly there is no one who is a better advocate for your big idea and for you than you are, because you know it better than anyone else. You’ve lived with it longer than anyone else. You love it more than anyone else, and hopefully you know yourself, you’ve lived with yourself and you’ve loved yourself better than anyone else.

So there isn’t anyone who can do it better. And when you remove yourself from the situation, I often teach my clients to hire themselves to be their own advocates. So to, you know, lay out all of the qualifications that you need and then advocate, and then lay out all the ways in which you meet those qualifications or get the skills you need in order to do so. So that ultimately, the person with the most knowledge, the most passion, the most faith, the most background in this big idea is the one out there publicly supporting it.

Andrea: I really like the way you put that just hiring yourself as your own advocate. And making the decision, it sounds like to not just rest on your strengths and the things that you’re already good at. But to add to that the things that you need to be able to get your idea into the world. I think something that a lot of people don’t realize that it’s OK to say “I’m not good at this yet, but I will be.”

Heather Hansen: That’s absolutely right. And most of these things can be trained, you know, they can be learned. You have to be curious though, and you have to be open to the idea that you’re not an expert in everything. You’re an expert in your big idea that is for sure. But some of these other things you’re not yet an expert in. And that’s OK.

We can make you an expert by training and tools and specific. I mean, some of the tools are really easy, but things that you can remember just as you step out, like the idea of hiring yourself to be your own advocate. And the nice thing about that, Andrea, is that there’s all kinds of studies that show that when we remove ourselves from a situation and refer to ourselves almost as a third person. So if I were to say to you, “Oh, Heather is getting upset about that,” it sounds ridiculous but it helps us to see things from a different perspective and to take them less personally.

So when you hire yourself, you’re able to sort of remove yourself and say, “Well, this new hiree is lacking in these skills. So she’s gonna need some training there, but she’s very strong in these skills so that’s why we’re hiring her.” And it removes you from the situation, so you don’t take it so personally if you’re lacking in one or two of the things that you need.

Andrea: That’s really interesting. I guess I’m kind of wondering how it hits on value and how we value ourselves, how we value our own voice or not. What’s your take on that?

Heather Hansen: I think that there are some people who are very centered in their value and they’re well aware of how valuable they are to their institution or to their boss or to their family. But it’s interesting, Andrea, because I think a lot of people know their value in one area of life, but maybe are less confident in another area of life.

So you may know that you’re a very good mother and friend, but less confident in your ability to use your voice or to get on stage and talk about your big idea. And so I think that the thing that we need to realize is that you have value in all of these areas and a lot of the skills that you use as a mother and a friend are transferable and you can use them in advocating for your big idea. Once you know your value in one area, it becomes a little bit easier to extend that to the other areas.

Andrea: Hmm, really good. When it comes to having a voice of influence is telling the truth or having a good idea enough or what role does building credibility or serving as an advocate play in promoting change?

Heather Hansen: It’s funny that part about telling the truth. You know, in my trials, both sides believe they’re telling the truth. You know, both sides have a story and it’s the person who is the better advocate that wins. It’s the person who tells that story with more evidence to support it. And in the corporate world that ends up being data with more confidence and, to your point, with more credibility.

So, it is very important to have and build your credibility, but you can do that in a whole host of ways. A lot of people struggle with this idea of credibility because they say, “Well, I don’t have the corporate background. I don’t have the education. I don’t have those years of experience.” But you do have this natural talent for communicating or you do have a natural way of holding yourself physically that’s going to be very effective when you’re advocating. So, building credibility is an important part, but it doesn’t mean that if you don’t have the background you can’t do it.

One of the biggest parts of building credibility is simply to set expectations and meet them and make promises and keep them. And if you can’t, this is the most important part, if you can’t to own it and fix it. So, you can build credibility in a huge way, very quickly, by doing that. And it’s not going to matter so much if you don’t have the years of experience or the education. If you have owned a mistake and fixed it or set an expectation and met it, you are well on your way to building your credibility.

Andrea: Uh, that’s really important, this idea of owning where you’ve messed up. Do you have any examples of that?

Heather Hansen: I have a lot of examples from my experience as an attorney. You know, I often gave keynotes in my early years to doctors and one of the things I would recommend to them is that when you have a complication and they happen, you know, they happen to you and I in our day, we make mistakes where things happen.

They happen in medicine as well. But I would always urge my clients to run towards their problems instead of away from them. Because studies show that when doctors sit down with a patient and own a complication, say, “Listen, this happened, I’m sorry, this is what we’re going to do to try to fix it.” That prevents lawsuits better than almost anything else.

So that’s a perfect example of building credibility in the worst possible scenario by that doctor has made a promise that they were unable to keep, they had set an expectation that they couldn’t meet but they owned it by talking about it with the patient in terms of the patient could understand and then they offered to do what they could to fix it if possible. If possible and that really builds credibility quickly.

Andrea: It sounds like it builds trust that allows for credibility.

Heather Hansen: So trust and credibility are close siblings. In my mind, trust just takes longer to build. So you know, in my cases, sometimes I’m only in front of a jury for three days, other times it’s three weeks. But three days, even three weeks isn’t time enough to build trust. But it is time enough to build credibility and that credibility would hopefully someday lead to trust. The relationship between a doctor and a patient, if you’ve been seeing that doctor for a long time, you may have built that trusting relationship. But if you haven’t, you can start with credibility and that can be a foundation for trust. And sometimes it can be enough on its own.

Andrea: Hmm. That’s really interesting. Credibility sort of leads to trust then if you’ve been around long enough, that’s, that’s really interesting. You say in your book on page 81, “When we build credibility at trial, we do it with evidence. You need evidence too. You can build credibility with evidence of honesty, patience time and hard work.” Tell us a little bit more about that. You’ve started to talk about it. I think that there’s more there.

Heather Hansen: Yeah. I mean, you know, evidence is how we win or lose cases. It’s the pieces of data that we put before a jury. So evidence of your credibility is…so for example, when I step into the courtroom, I’m always dressed a certain way. I always act a certain way. I don’t tend to be like loud and laughing in the courtroom because my cases tend to be very emotional for the parties, oftentimes, very sad.

And I want to set an expectation with the jury who’s wandering around in the hallway or sitting in the jury room, which is just next door that I am always going to act with empathy and with respect for them in the system. And I set that expectation and then every day I do what I can to meet it.. And then as far as promises in my openings, I make promises to the jury, but I don’t make them until I’m really sure that I can keep those promises. And so day by day you build. You know, you set expectations by saying “I’m gonna be on time and prepared for that meeting.” And then you meet it.

And by doing so you’ve started to build your credibility. You make a promise, “I’m going to get you that proposal by Friday.” And you keep that promise and with that you have started to build your credibility. And again, if you can’t do it, then you own it on Friday afternoon, you call the client as difficult as a call that might be and say, “I can’t keep that promise that I made to you. This is why I’m going to work on it all weekend and I will have it to you by Monday.” And then when you do, when you actually follow through on that, you have built a huge amount of credibility, but it takes step-by-step piece of evidence by piece of evidence to build that kind of credibility.

Andrea: Can we, can we take a look at this from a couple of different perspectives? I’m thinking about maybe framing this in terms of somebody that’s empower and somebody that’s in a position of power or authority where they are wanting to get people on board. They’re wanting to build credibility with the people that need to get on board with the thing that they’re going to do and then also from the perspective of that person that maybe doesn’t have as much power but they’re wanting build credibility with the person who does so that they can sort of see their thing go through.

When you see somebody who has from that perspective of I’ve got power, I’m in the position of power, and getting people on board; what kinds of things do they need to really be mindful of when it comes to how they look and how they act, just like you were talking about coming into the courtroom.

Heather Hansen: So, it’s easier for people who have already reached high levels of power and success to build credibility because we see their successes. And that starts to create a feeling of I trust them in that respect. But here’s the thing, Andrea, they may not have built any credibility when it comes to their relationships with you or their ability to follow through on a promise or the way that they treat their employees.

So it’s important to look at this, not just from a very, sterile black and white like numbers proposition, but also a relationship driven proposition. And the other problem that people who are in positions of leadership, people who have already done well, people who already have a lot of years behind them, they have what’s called the curse of knowledge. They know things so well that they forget what it’s like not to know them. And so they’re often talking in terms that the people that they’re trying to build credibility, “We don’t understand at all.”

I’ll give you another example from the courtroom. My doctors walk into the courtroom with a certain level of credibility simply from the fact that they went to medical school, they have done a fellowship. They’re been doing this operation for 15 years. That’s great. They have credibility with respect to their expertise. But that doesn’t mean that the jury finds them credible with respect to their compassion or their kindness or their ability to tell the truth. So they have to build that kind of credibility.

And one of the things that gets in the way is when they’re talking in words, the jury doesn’t understand. So, one of my jobs is to help them to remember what it’s like, not to know these things. So for example, if I have a case that involves a vascular surgeon that’s a surgeon that teaches treats blood vessels, I will say to the doctor, say the blood vessel surgeon, why confuse the situation with words that the jurors might not know rather than make it simple, make it understandable, and allow the jurors to really get into the story that you’re telling so that you can build that credibility.

Andrea: That’s interesting because I can see somebody on the jury thinking to themselves, “I don’t know what that means. Why don’t I know what that means? I feel like an idiot.”

Heather Hansen: You just hit something so important in the head that I worked so closely with my clients on. If I say one word that the jury doesn’t understand, Andrea, they don’t even hear the next eight to 10 words I say. Because doing that in their head like, “Wait a minute, what is that word? What is she talking about? This trial is gonna be hard.

I’m not gonna understand this stuff.” I can’t afford to have people not here eight to 10 words that I say and neither can any of you. If you are advocating for yourself or a raise, if you’re advocating for your big idea on a stage, if you’re trying to get funding for your huge idea that’s going to change the world. You’ve got to use words that your audience understands or else you will lose that opportunity for sure.

Andrea: Hmm, so good. OK, so, so you have to use words that people understand. What about the way that somebody acts in? OK, we’re still talking about this person who is already in power. How can they act around others who may be underneath of them in a sense in a hierarchical kind of a situation, or at least there’s, they don’t have as much power as they do for whatever reason. I am assuming that setting people at ease is an important piece of it, but what are some other things that you would recommend?

Heather Hansen: So, setting people at ease is certainly an important piece of it. Body language is an important piece of it. I work a lot with my clients on their body language, you know, crossed arms. A lot of these things are the things that sort of come naturally. But I don’t know if you know about power posing and powerful poses versus less powerful poses. There’s also ways to sort of use your body language to make people feel more comfortable around you. And the other thing that we don’t talk enough about is tone of voice, the way that you not only use your tone of voice but also listen to others.

And one of the most important pieces that a person empowered needs to know is that when you are the powerful person in the room, it is your job to do more listening and less speaking because you want to know what the people in the room need. That is the opposite for the less powerful person who should try to do more speaking and be given the opportunity to do more speaking. So for the person who is in power, it’s being very receptive and open and almost empty. You know, they have all these preset ideas, they have all this training, they have all this knowledge, and they have all this experience. And yet, in order to truly advocate, you need to know what the other people want, need, see, and perceived. And you don’t find that out without asking questions, listening to answers, paying attention to body language, and looking around a little bit.

Andrea: Hmm. So how do you help somebody who is maybe not in power or not as powerful in that particular situation, be able to advocate for themselves, you know, where they are speaking up more and that sort of thing. How do you encourage them to do that?

Heather Hansen: So, a lot of that comes down to what we started this talk about with respect to confidence, you know. So, we have to try to build the confidence to speak so that you can build the credibility by what you say.

One of the hard things that I talked to a lot of young women about is because you can’t have credibility immediately. You have to build it and that takes time. You know, and I gave a talk to a group of young women the other day and I said to them, you know, “I don’t want to disappoint you, but you’re not going to have credibility tomorrow.” You know, it is a series of expectations met and promises kept. But if you prepare like crazy, you are going to have more confidence to speak up because you’re going to be secure in the knowledge that you have the information that needs to be shared. And then the thing that I really tried to help people to focus on is you are now speaking for your big idea. You’re not speaking for yourself. You’re doing this for something else or someone else.

Andrea: There’s something at stake that’s beyond my need.

Heather Hansen: That’s exactly right and when that’s true, we all are more likely to step up to the plate when we know that if we don’t advocate for our big idea, people will be worse off for it. There will not be this opportunity. You know, I work with some people who are in the environmental fields and if we don’t get that big idea out there, this thing that could help us to clean the oceans will never be realized. Or for women who are looking for VC funding, if you don’t get your big idea out there, you’ll never get the money that you need to create this product that’s going to change the world. That is important. And that means that you have to speak up for that thing. It’s not for you because we oftentimes get more insecure about speaking up for ourselves. It’s for that thing and that thing needs you.

Andrea: I think we’re a lot more willing, at least women, are a lot more to sacrifice for something else than we are for ourselves.

Heather Hansen: Gosh, you are innately brilliant, Andrea, because you’re a 100 percent right. There is this study out of Harvard Business Review that shows that when it comes to negotiating, women are actually more likely to lean towards unethical when they are negotiating for someone else, whereas men will lean that way for themselves. So, not that anyone should be leaning towards unethical, but you’re right in that women will do things. I mean it’s the Mama Bear Syndrome.

Andrea: It is.

Heather Hansen: And I know this from my experience in the courtroom, I will negotiate for my clients in ways that I would never negotiate if I were buying a car like aggressively and confidently. And there’s so many things that we’re willing to do for others that we aren’t always willing to do for ourselves, which is why it really helps to reframe the conversation to recognize what it is you’re advocating for.

Andrea: OK, so we’re in the midst of quite the interesting political climate and I don’t expect either one of us to talk about politics too much. But I am really curious about the actual conversations or lack of conversation, perhaps lack of dialogue, that’s taking place. And I’m curious if you have any advice that you would give to political leaders who are sort of vying for position and authority, who want to get people to believe that they are more credible than somebody else. What kind of advice would you give them?

Heather Hansen: The most powerful person in the room is the one who’s doing the most listening. When you’re listening to what your constituents want, what your audience wants, what your potential funders want, no matter what it is. So if you’re a politician, if you’re truly listening to what your constituents want, you are getting the information you need to win. You also have to be willing though to listen to those that are different from you. You know, we can’t win by only having the choir that we love to preach to vote for us.

So there has to be some level of compromise and some level of being able to move to the center, but you’re not going to even begin to have any sort of authority with people of the other side until you are listening to them and proving that you’re listening to them by repeating it back. One of the things that’s really powerful, Andrea, in all aspects of advocating for yourself is mimicking the person you’re speaking with.

So I used to be a waitress and I got pretty good tips and I always thought it was because I worked my butt off, but I recently read a study that explained it a little bit more. When a customer would order, they would say, “I’ll have a swordfish with anchovy butter on the side, baked potato with sour cream, and a salad with Parmesan and pepper dressing,” and I would say “Got it. Swordfish, anchovy butter on the side, salad with parmesan and peppercorn dressing and a baked potato with sour cream.” I would repeat it back word for word, and people love that.

Studies show that waitress and waiters who repeat back a customer’s order word for word get 73 percent higher tips because it shows that you’re listening. People want to be heard and seen. And I think in politics right now, I mean there’s so much going on in politics and so much that is wrong, but every single person in this country wants to know that there is a leader out there who sees them, who hears them and wants to get it right. Just like I did with those customers at the Chartroom. I saw them, I heard them and I told them what it was that I heard and they knew I was going to try to get it right.

Andrea: Hmm. So, so good. And I am sure that those customers, after you repeated that back to them, they could sit back in their chair and have a really good conversation instead of worrying about whether or not you were going to get it right.

Heather Hansen: That’s it. That’s it. They were confident that I was going off to do my job and they couldn’t drink their mudslide and have a great time.

Andrea: Yeah.

Heather Hansen: That’s right. And in politics it’s the same. I mean, you know, for yourself, Andrea, all you want to know is that there’s someone in politics who sees you, who hears you and is trying to get it right for you. And I think that if more of our politicians were focused on that rather than fighting with each other and not listening to anybody other than the echo chamber that makes them feel more important then we would have a much better dialogue going on and we would ultimately end up with much better leaders.

Andrea: Wow, Heather, this has been a fantastic conversation. It’s sad that we’re at the end, but I would like to ask, if the listener is like really intrigued and would like to connect with you, where can they find you?

Heather Hansen: Well, I’m in transition right now. So right now the website is a heatherhansonpresents.com but the best way to reach out to me would be my email, which is heather@advocatetowin.com and the new website’s going to be advocatetowin.com and I said, in transition. But direct email me is fine if you want a little piece of some of the tools that we’ve talked about, there is at my heatherhansenpresents.com website. There is a webinar on picking people and I talked with the jury consultant on the tools that we use to pick jurors and how that can be applied in your life outside the courtroom, and that’s free at the website.

Andrea: That sounds fascinating. I’m going to personally check that one out. That sounds great. All right, Heather, thank you so much for being a Voice of Influence for our listeners today.

Heather Hansen: Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed our conversation.

Posted on Monday, October 21, 2019

The Power of Presence with Dr. Nancy Gordon

Episode 112

Dr. Nancy Gordon is a Chairperson and Associate Professor of the Graduate Department of Counseling, Leadership and Expressive Arts at Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island where she has a full-time teaching load. Dr. Gordon is also a Program Director for the Holistic Graduate Programs with oversight of several cross-disciplinary programs including an innovative MA and Holistic Leadership. Her most recent published work is entitled Women and Leadership: An Integrative Focus on Equality. Dr. Gordon received her Doctor of Education from Harvard University. In this episode, Dr. Gordon discusses the main purpose that weaves it’s way into all of her work, what it means to be human, the importance of integrating humanity into our work, her simple and effective tip to help you be present in the moment, why people of influence need to focus on making sure those around them are fully present, the power of utilizing storytelling to help those around you focus, why trust is crucial when it comes to collaboration, the difference between management skills and leadership skills, the details of her upcoming leadership summit, and more!

Mentioned in this episode:

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Transcript

Hey, Hey! It’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast. This is where we explore the intersection of human dynamics, communication, and service. If you’re interested in growing your own voice of influence or the influence of those on your team, you can check us out at voiceofinfluence.net and just give us a shout out. We’d love to talk.

Today, I have with me Dr. Nancy Gordon. Nancy is a Chairperson and Associate Professor of the Graduate Department of Counseling, Leadership and Expressive Arts at Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island where she has a full time teaching load. Dr. Gordon is a Program Director for the Holistic Graduate Programs with oversight of several cross-disciplinary programs including an innovative MA and Holistic Leadership. Her most recent published work is entitled Women and Leadership: An Integrative Focus on Equality. Dr. Gordon received her Doctor of Education from Harvard University.

Andrea: Dr. Gordon. It is wonderful to have you here with me on the Voice of Influence podcast.

Dr. Nancy Gordon: Thank you. I’m very happy to be here.

Andrea: So you have a lot of different things that you do. So, I’m kind of curious, what do you consider out of all those different roles and your experience is there any kind of message or purpose that seems to be running throughout what you do and who you are?

Dr. Nancy Gordon: Yes. I think my purpose has always been to help people find their own selves, their purpose, their voice, their mission, their ability to function effectively in whatever it is they’re interested in doing. And in many ways, that’s been a lot of my life, my career, my interest in education and learning.

Andrea: Hmm. And is there a reason for that, do you think? I mean, is this a personal thing for you?

Dr. Nancy Gordon: I think it started out that way. My background, I’ve always been interested in several things, in large system thinking. I have a BA and MA in International Relations and then I end up in Rhode Island where that is not really a _____ for a career and began to work with all kinds of educational programs. One specifically was with corrections and another was with urban adults wanting to come back to school and get degrees to further their own learning and education. And I was always very interested in how education is a social change force, so that kind of guided me for many, many years. And I went back to school to try to figure out how to use the ideas I had in education at a larger level and then found a voice in teaching. As I came out of my doctoral program, I began to do the usual that some of us do go from one adjunct course to another. But what I discovered is I really love teaching and I hadn’t known that. So, in many ways I came accidentally to that part of what I’m doing now. And then I came to Salve Regina University, which is a sister of Mercy University dedicated to justice and mercy. And so I found a way to use that in the programs that I’m now running because they really are, in many ways, formative around those ideas and teaching people how to integrate the best of human, our humanity basically, into what they’re doing. I don’t know if that…does that answer you?

Andrea: Yeah, I would love that.

Dr. Nancy Gordon: That was very long winded.

Andrea: No, no. I love that. So integrating our humanity into what we’re doing. Tell me a little bit more about that.

Dr. Nancy Gordon: Yeah, what it means to be human. Sometimes, I think we’ve lost that. What does it mean to be human and how does that apply? I am personally very interested in how things integrate and lineup. You named my article about a focus on equality for women, I’m interested in how the body, mind and spirit are integrated into the work we do, which is why I found a perfect home itself at Salve Regina University because that’s pretty much the background foundation of all the programs we run here. How to integrate body, mind, and spirit, what’s a holistic approach? And holism has become sort of a jargonized term now. And if you think about it as integrative, how do we integrate all aspects of our lives, our work, our families, our hobbies, our communities? How does that all play a part in the way that we function in the world? And how do we see that?

Andrea: Let’s go back first to…tell me this. What does it mean to be human?

Dr. Nancy Gordon: Ah, that is the question, isn’t it?

Andrea: Hmm.

Dr. Nancy Gordon: I think it means, first of all, finding a way to be present in the world so that you’re not constantly reacting and judging what’s going on. So, being human means to have compassion for folks that are different from ourselves, for folks that may not have had some of the same advantages or are more disadvantaged for being able to step back and live in a world of our own presence, our own voice influencing that more towards what could be improved. What is important also I think from where I sit is that we are all human beings living on one planet, and I think we have forgotten that it doesn’t matter where we’re living, but that we are brothers and sisters in humanity. And so that’s another thing that I’m very interested in helping all of us see.

Andrea: Yeah. I think that idea of being present is, you know, in some ways it feels like, well, yeah, of course we need to be present, we’re present. But being present in that moment and participating almost in that moment rather than being critical and looking at everything through analytical eyes is a really interesting distinction.

Dr. Nancy Gordon: It is.

Andrea: So tell me a little bit more about that.

Dr. Nancy Gordon: Well, presence, first of all, probably for any of us is “How am I here?” “Where am I?” “Am I in the place that I’m sitting in?” “Am I focused in my own being, in my own body or am I here but I’m somewhere else?” So presence is where a good question I would ask is where am I literally? And I mean, literally. I will sometimes start my classes by saying to my students, where are you? And at first, everyone used to laugh at me and I’m saying to them, not how are you, but where are you? What do you need to do to bring yourself into this moment in this room so that we can have a learning environment? And since then, of course I asked the question whenever, whatever, I’m myself. If I find myself off, I’ll just say, “Where am I?” “What do I need to do?” “Do I need to put my feet on the floor?” “Do I need to walk around?” “Do I need to take a breath?” But the real question underneath it all is where am I? It sounds so simple, doesn’t it?

Andrea: It does. And yet I really understand because just a simple example when I was in college, I was a vocal major. And so singing was just something that I did a lot. And I would go in for my voice lesson and my teacher would ask me kind of, how are you doing? And she would kind of ask those questions even though it’s not a where are you right now, it was getting to where are you, you know. It was allowing me to kind of process a little bit how he was feeling so that I could come into the moment and actually sing.

Dr. Nancy Gordon: Exactly.

Andrea: And I think makes a lot of sense.

Dr. Nancy Gordon: So that’s part of it. And now there’s a lot of research and work being done changing it from just presence to presencing. Now think about that one because then it becomes an active process and an active practice. And there are things you can do to really, and this is at a slightly higher level than just where are you, what are you doing in your own life, but as leaders, how are you guiding others to find their voice, find their heart, and find their spirit. And then how do you find that as you’re working with other people, how do you line up a group so that the group can be fully present and working from all of that integrative place in their own being? It’s really important as your teacher was showing you and your vocal. You can’t sing if you’re not in your body. And I can’t talk if I’m not in my body. I can, but I can’t talk from the place that I want to work from.

Andrea: So why is it so important that leaders be able to help a group of people, be able to become more present? I know that that’s not necessarily what everybody is thinking all the time. You know, people don’t go into leadership thinking I need to help people be more present. And yet I know that this is certainly important. So tell us why. Why should we even put effort towards that when we’re people who want to have influence?

Dr. Nancy Gordon: Well, first of all, the work now is starting to come together around this. There’s a lot of work about how do you working more from your authentic self. You begin to hear that or working from the inside out, leading from the inside out, finding your own purpose, your own values, your own core, your own place. And so it’s starting to come together that this is critically important to how to thrive whether you’re in a group, you’re in a large system, you’re in a community, you’re in a church, or you’re in an agency, you have to start from the place of presence in order to be able to function effectively, to live more fully. Now, I mean that’s a really simplistic term to say it and if you’re working with a corporation, you might say it helps the bottom line. If you’re working with a not-for-profit, you might say, this is really a way to show your core values. Do you see what I mean? But really, it’s how do you have an effective meeting? How do you get out of the police where we’re always judging each other or we’re doing 5 million things instead of just being there in that moment doing the thing that we need to do to effectively contribute to whatever the product or the service or our own wellbeing in any endeavor that we’re involved in.

Andrea: So let’s take it to a meeting. Let’s take that as an example.

Dr. Nancy Gordon: Sure.

Andrea: People are walking into the meeting and there is an agenda. Somebody is leading the meeting, what’s going on in the individuals that are coming in the door and how can they move from being distracted and out in, you know, trying to get their to-do-lists done in their own head rather than, you know, sort of being in the moment. How does a leader guide the group in that situation?

Dr. Nancy Gordon: Well, first of all, if the group is used to the leader doing that, say for my department, we always start with a moment of say silence or centering because we all know that’s what we’re modeling for our programs and our classes. However, I go to other meetings and we immediately start right in. And so if I’m starting something where I’m the leader in a new place, I’ll ask permission. I’ll say, “Would it be OK with us if we start with just a quick moment of focusing?”, I never say meditation or grounding or you know, you all are way out of your coming in with all your to do list. I’ll just say, “Can we just stop for a moment and come together so that we are able to function together in concert.” So that’s one way to do it.

Andrea: I really like that idea of saying, “Can we stop for a moment of focusing?” I think that that is a really good tip.

Dr. Nancy Gordon: Yeah. And also to ask permission because some folk, I mean I think that’s really important. Sometimes, some of my students, for instance, will learn a new technique or a new concept. And they’ll go home and they’ll say to whoever or wherever they’re working, “Oh, I see what you’re doing whatever it is, you know, your odd alignment, you’re jumping the ladder of influence.” And I’m saying to them, “Don’t do that.” You’re learning some new things that you need to incorporate into your own being before you can cow call out somebody else because they’re not doing it. So, that’s would be the same thing for a leader in a group. You know, rather than calling out, you might say, “I really like to try something new to get us more effective in and probably out of here quicker.”

Andrea: Uh-hmm, exactly. To most people they would be thrilled to hear that.

Dr. Nancy Gordon: Yeah. I think you know, let’s try away of being able to focus quickly and also another thing is just doing it in a couple of minutes. You know, don’t take people who aren’t used to this through 20 minutes of something. You know, give five minutes of, put your feet on the floor. I’ll walk around and you know, if that isn’t going to work in a group then find something that does. You know, it could be have a little snack before we start walk around. I have a tendency in my groups, I make people walk around, stand up, but they’re used, you know, that’s what they’re used to me. If they’re not used to me, I’m very cautious.

Andrea: Have you ever used storytelling to help them focus?

Dr. Nancy Gordon: Yes, I’m starting it, yes. And I’ve been part of what we did over the last couple of years was to begin to take some of our courses and integrate in our community. And we brought somebody in who would guide us to begin with a storytelling. I have just instituted that into one of my classes. Each of my students is going to have to do a circle story starting October 22nd and I have never done this before, but I’m giving them some guidelines about. I want you to just tell a story. The only hard and fast rules, it has to be five minutes and then they can write it. They can talk it. They can do whatever they want in that five minutes, but then they have to write a summary of it that they handmade. So I’m really curious to see how this is going to work.

Andrea: That’s my primary way of getting a group to focus is start out with a story.

Dr. Nancy Gordon: Well how do you do that?

Andrea: I usually just start in. I don’t tell them I’m going to tell them a story, I just sort of start telling the story.

Dr. Nancy Gordon: I love this.

Andrea: And I take them into the moment. I learned really how to do that when I wrote my book and it’s a memoir and I didn’t really know how to do that before that. But to really bring people into the moment, setting the scene, that sort of thing, making sure that there’s something, a reason to listen to the story, you know, that there’s something at stake and then either closing the loop right away or at least giving some enough of a conclusion that it will lead into the topic at hand. And then coming back at the end to make sure to close it up completely with that last little, and so therefore, you know, you go and do the thing, you know, whatever the thing is. And I feel like it has been super impactful and effective.

Dr. Nancy Gordon: Well, I love this. We’re going to do a leadership summit here in April and that’s why I’m testing this now. I’m beginning to think that’s the way to start the start the summit.

Andrea: Yeah, yeah. Oh, that’s exciting.

Dr. Nancy Gordon: I haven’t got it all in my head yet, but this is the beginning of thinking about it. Because stories, the way you’re describing them, “I’m closing the loop.” They can be personal. They can work with the group. The group can have a story or the system can have a story or a person can have a story. I love the way that you’re describing it.

Andrea: I find that it really helps when it’s a light story where there’s something deeper underneath always.

Dr. Nancy Gordon: Always.

Andrea: Yeah. Yeah. So it’s not a hard, hard thing to tell. It’s not a hard thing to listen to, but there’s something really deep underneath of it. Yeah.

Dr. Nancy Gordon: Like a parable.

Andrea: Yeah. Right, exactly a parable, which Jesus used quite well and it’s something that we have gotten poor at doing. We’ve want to just tell people what to do instead of sharing a story that could illustrate it. It’s very interesting.

Dr. Nancy Gordon: So what has been some of the results for you?

Andrea: Well, I guess mostly people being able to pay attention and people feeling like I feel like I see people actually present in the moment and that sort of thing. So let’s go back to you. Let’s go back to you. I’m sorry, I didn’t want to hijack the conversation, but I thought that’s such a good idea of bringing people into that focusing moment and I hadn’t made that connection myself before that that’s exactly what was going on.

Dr. Nancy Gordon: Right. I just need to say I don’t feel hijacked at all.

Andrea: OK.

Dr. Nancy Gordon: I thought that was a great intervention.

Andrea: OK that’s fun. I think you and I could talk a long time, Nancy.

Dr. Nancy Gordon: It’s beginning to feel that way.

Andrea: But I’m actually really curious more about this idea of collaboration and working within a system. These are other things that you really talk a lot about. And so what do you see as being some of the most foundational elements of a team that can really work together in collaboration well?

Dr. Nancy Gordon: Trust is huge. How does that happen? A team needs to be able to communicate. And I mean literally, the root word of communicate is commune. So, a team that is used to working together may need a little bit of tipping into another direction if the communication is off. Collaboration means first, also being able to say, “I’m great at this. You are great at that, can we share whatever we need to do because none of us is by ourselves can handle the whole thing.” I’m sure you’ve heard the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, but that’s literal. I mean that is a literal equation that works for collaboration. Everybody can contribute and everybody has a gift. So if you really want collaboration, we need to learn how to honor each other’s gifts and be able to say, “You’re great at this, can you handle that?” And that’s of course if everybody’s willing and also that there isn’t always one leader. There may be somebody that’s in the ability of seeing the whole, but can also let the parts work on their own ways. Does that make sense?

Andrea: Oh yeah. And I wonder too, do you think that people kind of need permission to be themselves in those situations?

Dr. Nancy Gordon: They not only need permission, sometimes they need to learn how to do it. And in conversations, especially hard ones have to be facilitated usually, but conversations in groups where we just need to get things done, some folks can’t stand the process around the communication. Others love the process but want to get right into the structure of something. So, I think for collaborating in a group, you have to have it all. You have to have a way to open and close the loop, as you said. You also have to have an agenda. You also have to have probably goals if that’s needed or tasks or whatever the purpose is. And I think that’s underneath the whole thing as well as you have to know the purpose of a group. Otherwise, have you noticed things just they’ll flounder, you know? But if you know your purpose then you have sort of a landmark or a map or a way to stay on purpose even if things go differently from the way we think they’re going to go. My own idea for planning is to have like three separate arm strategies and then an optimum and then OK. Maybe none of those are going to work but at least I’ve thought about them.

Andrea: Yeah.

Dr. Nancy Gordon: And then I don’t walk in with that. I’ll throw that away. But I’ve thought that there’s always a way that whatever I’m thinking about can somehow be integrated, but maybe not necessarily the way I’m thinking it ought to be. So, yeah, I suppose the collaboration is a lot if I’m really truly living that the sum is greater than the sum of its parts, then I also have to live with the fact of letting go and controlling some of it. That has been a hard lesson.

Andrea: Yeah. Being kind of open to offering your ideas without demanding that they’d be the way that it goes.

Dr. Nancy Gordon: Exactly. That’s kind of interesting to have to learn to do that. A professor in a classroom, my classrooms, I have to do it all the time. And my students laugh with me now because I’ll recalibrate standing right in front of them. “OK, this is going to have to change right now.” But I’m not afraid of that anymore. You know, I’m into it long enough to know they’re appreciating me doing that.

Andrea: You used to be afraid of it?

Dr. Nancy Gordon: I didn’t know how to do it, you know, I mean I’m trained highly left-brained. I’m trained in traditional ways of, well, research for one thing, but also for the way you consult, say, in systems. And I’m standing in the classroom and I was trained, you’d never tell anything about yourself and that’s sort of got to be thrown away in a program like I run. And then I don’t lecture, so what’s going to emerge in the classroom is something we’ll have to work with. I don’t know that I was afraid. I just didn’t connect up that it was a skill that I could do it. That it was OK.

Andrea: And is that something that you teach people to do?

Dr. Nancy Gordon: I do.

Andrea: Yeah.

Dr. Nancy Gordon: I absolutely do.

Andrea: And what sort of process do they have to go through internally to kind of get to the point where they can do that?

Dr. Nancy Gordon: Well, it depends on the level of the class and whether they’re in my program or, you know, in my leadership classes I have a lot of sometimes across different disciplines. They’re not as used to me as my own students. So, I have to _____ really carefully, like in my first class, I’ll ask permission to do focusing. Now, they expect it in my own classes there, especially those that have had me more than once. They’re ready for this. They’re ready to be a part of the process. So, they’re learning that they can be a part of the process. In some of the classes, I’m teaching leadership skills because leadership skills have to be…they can be learned and that’s the message underneath our whole program. And that they’re different from management skills. We have great MBA programs, but that’s not what I’m doing.

Andrea: So, what is the difference between management and leadership?

Dr. Nancy Gordon: It’s really appropriate. They’re totally different, disciplines really. Leadership is teaching a set of skills of how to see systems, how to lead, how to lead change, and notice that it’s lead. Management is a control function and really the important one, but it’s still a control function. And a lot of times what we’re finding is people who are really great managers who are all thrown into leadership positions and then it’s a “Duh, what do I do now?” Because the skills for management and control are not necessarily the skills for leading, especially leading people or systems. So, they’re just totally different skills. I’m teaching interpersonal communication skills. I’m teaching some cross-cultural awareness skills, a way of seeing holistically. Can you hear the language? If I were teaching in an MBA program, I’d be teaching some finance and management and control. I would be teaching planning and I teach planning as well, but it’s a different way of thinking about planning. For me, the planning is at the vision level. For management and control, it’s at the implementation level, and they’re really both important.

Andrea: Absolutely.

Dr. Nancy Gordon: It’s just that I’m not doing that.

Andrea: They’re just different.

Dr. Nancy Gordon: Yeah, they’re totally different and there’s been a lot of, I think, confusion, especially in the beginning of, leadership, now is a great jargon word. Everybody is into leadership but what does that mean? Do you see what I’m saying?

Andrea: Oh yeah.

Dr. Nancy Gordon: “Oh, I lead all the time.” “Well, OK, you know, that’s great.” But that is also not the way we’re teaching it. We’re teaching people to be effective leaders, to be effective in their bodies, to be effective _____ projecting to really look at their biases and the way that they communicate _____ other people who are equally skilled, be able to also function at the same level. Does that make sense?

Andrea: Yes. So, Nancy, I know that you said that you have this leadership summit that’s coming up. When is that? Is that something that you want to tell the audience about?

Dr. Nancy Gordon: Yes, it’s coming up April 17th, 18th and 19th. We’re calling it Salve’s Leadership Community Summit. It’s an emerging summit, but we’re in the process now of…we want to get folks together that really want to actually start learning about storytelling, about planning, design learning about the ability to create dialogues around topics that are of interest. And we’ll create some topics that we think of our interests. We’re thinking probably inclusion is going to be one of them. Also what it means to lead now, what it means to lead going forward into the future globally.

Andrea: Hmm. That’s huge.

Dr. Nancy Gordon: And our program is a program that works from the individual all the way through thinking global issues. So, I think what we’re going to try to do is use that as our ability to help people work through a lot. But mostly, I think underneath it all, it’s get together and have people learn to have good conversations across sectors. I think that’s my main vision. That’s as far as we’ve gotten.

Andrea: That’s so important. Well, it sounds wonderful. If people are interested in attending that, how do they find it?

Dr. Nancy Gordon: Well, we’re going to have a domain up very soon, but for the moment they can contact me at nancy.gordon@salve.edu. So that’s one way. They can contact our grad studies program. Kristen’s number, I think you have it.

Andrea: We’ll make sure to put that in the show notes so that people can find it easily.

Dr. Nancy Gordon: We’ll have a domain up for the summit very soon.

Andrea: Then it might be up by the time the podcast episode comes up.

Dr. Nancy Gordon: When is it coming up?

Andrea: I’m not sure yet, but we’ll talk about it later.

Dr. Nancy Gordon: Oh OK.

Andrea: So no problem. So yeah, we’ll have information about how to find this summit and if you’re interested in attending, if you want to look, check it out. We’ll have the information on that on our website in the show notes so that you can easily find it. But Nancy, one more question for you today. Again, I feel like we could talk for hours and hours and hours.

Dr. Nancy Gordon: I agree.

Andrea: But what would be one final sort of tip that you would leave with the audience for somebody who really wants to have a voice of influence.

Dr. Nancy Gordon: Be yourself. And that might mean find out who you are. If you know who you are, trust it, use it, and be proud of it.

Andrea: Beautiful. Beautiful. Love it. Thank you so much for being a voice of influence for our listeners today.

Dr. Nancy Gordon: Thank you so much for having me.

Posted on Monday, October 14, 2019

How to Show Up to Old Relationships With Your New Self with Brian Dixon

Episode 111

Brian Dixon is a podcaster, conference speaker, and business coach who is passionate about helping authors, speakers, and aspiring messengers create a sustainable business through growing their platform and creating compelling online courses. Brian has a doctoral degree from the University of San Diego and is the co-founder of Hope Writers, a membership site of over 2,000 working writers. In this episode, Brian talks about the inspiration for his new book, tips for putting people ahead of projects and living a people-first lifestyle, why we need to outgrow our upbringing, the importance of leading with humility as you put yourself out there in increasingly public ways, why he strives to peak when he is sixty-five years old, his advice for becoming a voice of influence, and more!

Mentioned in this episode:

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Transcript

Hey, Hey! It’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast, where we explore the intersection of human dynamics, communication, and service. If you’re interested in growing your own voice of influence or the influence of those on your team, check us out at voiceofinfluence.net and connect to us to talk. We’d love to hear from you. Today, I have with me Brian Dixon. He has a podcaster, conference speaker, and business coach. Brian is passionate about helping authors, speakers, and aspiring messengers create a sustainable business through growing their platform, creating compelling online courses. He is the co-founder of hope writers, a membership site of over 2000 working writers. Brian has a doctoral degree from the University of San Diego, and he and his wife Julie live in Charlotte, North Carolina with their three young children.

Andrea: Brian, it’s great to have you on the Voice of Influence podcast!

Brian Dixon: Andrea, I’m so excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

Andrea: Yes, and congratulations on the recent launch of your book, Start with Your People: The Daily Decision that Changes Everything. I love that.

Brian Dixon: It’s so important. You know, we’ve got to realize how important people are in our life and in our business. And that’s really where it all begins, is our relationship with the people that are already in our life.

Andrea: Hmm. Let me start with that. Let me just start with why did you decide that that was an important thing to discuss? Why is it that you wrote this particular book?

Brian Dixon: Huh, I mean the reality is our message. The thing that we are struggling with right now, the thing that you’re dealing with in your life right now that I believe you’re going to overcome. I believe that if you keep listening to podcasts, if you keep signing up for training, if you’re working with a coach, if you have a mastermind group, like the things that we know to do, if we’re doing those things the stuckness that you’re in right now in your life is not going to be there. And a year from now or two years from now, there’ll be another thing. But the thing you’re working on right now, you’re going to move through it, you’re going to move past it. And so for me, that thing was my relationship with, people specifically, I was putting projects and accomplishment over recognition and relationships.

Andrea: OK. Projects and accomplishment. What did that look like for you?

Brian Dixon: You know, it would look like somebody having my full attention. So, we’re in the middle of a launch. Part of what I do is I help people get their online thing off the ground. So, a lot of times that’s a course or that’s a membership site. I do that through coaching and then all through some building some agency kind of work. And so I’m all in, right? So, I’ll work, you know, 21 hours a day on this thing and get it off the ground and like really go hard. And then after it’s done, I won’t follow up or I wasn’t, like I want to follow up for like six months because I already did finish it. Like the thing that we did together is good and, you know, for years I wanted to write thank you notes. I wanted to be the kind of person that continues relationships even after a business arrangement had ended or I completed.

I don’t know what it is. I think honestly, I think just think it was a lack of self awareness and it was really seeing people for the value that they can bring to me and the bottom line instead of seeing people for who they really are and just that power of relationships. And so, I’ve learned so much in the last few years about authenticity, vulnerability, intimacy, and relationships. I think I’m about that into-me-see, like I love that word. I want people to see into me, you know. I want them to be able to say, “Hey Brian, this is what you’re awesome at.” And also here are a couple of areas that I’ve noticed that, you know, it kind of rubs people the wrong way because when we’re aware of those things, I believe that we deliver better client service. I believe that we show up in a bigger way and we actually attract our ideal clients even more when we’re really authentic.

Andrea: Hmm. That’s interesting. I like the authenticity piece of all that for sure. I’m wondering too about, OK, so projects you get done with a project with somebody and then how much of just busy-ness and the reality of the fact that we just can’t possibly, you know, keep up with, you know, thousands of people or whatever, you know, it might be. How do you reconcile that with that new found desire to really have that authentic relationship with people that would be ongoing?

Brian Dixon: It’s a great question and I think it’s really, really hard, right? Most of us have hundreds, if not thousands of “friends” on social media, like we’re connected to people. I’m so connected to people I went to elementary school with, you know, like we just keep adding relationships into our life. And so it’s impossible to stay in touch with everybody and that’s definitely all what I’m saying. But I do believe that we make an effect like we have an effect on the world around us. We have an effect on the relationships that are in our lives and we get to choose that effect. We get to choose if we want to be somebody who says life giving words, somebody who builds others up, somebody who encourages people to reach their highest potential. And I was doing that like in some ways, I’ve received good feedback but I also recognized that there were areas of my life where all I needed to do, Andrea, was just to like slow down and turn and say, “You know what, I had a blast working with you. Thank you so much. Thanks for hiring me.” Or you know, “Thanks for having me speak at your conference, I never did that before.” And those little actions don’t take a lot of time, but they make such a big difference.

Andrea: It’s almost like a closing a loop or you know, that hole like. We have this thing, we’ve done it well to come back afterwards and close that loop to be able to say that. But I really appreciated that. You’re right, there’s something so powerful and I don’t know like relationship building about that for sure.

Brian Dixon: Yeah. You know, what one practice, just to make it really practical for you guys listening, because you’re probably thinking like how do you do it? Like, what do you actually do? So this morning, you know, so I have this morning routine that I go through and part of it, it includes a journal. So, I have my journal out and you know, I’m a person of faith and so there’s some prayer and some Bible reading, but you don’t have to be a person of faith to use a journal in the morning, right? And so I’ve taken the journal out and what I do is I pray, but you could just meditate, you could just think. And what I do is I just, whoever comes to mind, I just write down their name. And so this morning there were four names that came to mind. Two of them I realized in that moment that, “Whoa, there’s some brokenness here.” There are two relationships from way long ago that I just need to reach out to him. Just say, “Hey, I was thinking about you today.” That’s where it starts, just, “Hey I was thinking about you today,” and there’s a chance that I might need to say sorry. There’s a chance that I might need to clean something up that I left broken. But what I know is that when those names come to mind, I now have a responsibility.

I was talking to my business coach yesterday and he said, “You know, the thing about a blind spot is once we see it, it’s no longer a blind spot. It’s now something we’re aware of and we have a choice. Are we going to address it or we’re going to ignore it?” So this morning, you know, one guy’s name came to mind. I wrote it down and as I’m like taking the trash out to the curb, I sent him a text message or a Facebook messenger message and I just said, “Hey man, I was thinking about you, like what’s new in your life?” He’s going through a divorce. I didn’t know. And now he said, “Well, I’m headed on my way to the attorney, and then hopefully that the judge will sign off on the divorce papers.” And I had no idea. So I write him back right away and I’m like, “Oh man, I’m so sorry. I had no idea.” And I have to believe, you know, that’s not coincidence that his name came to mind today as he is on his way to his attorney’s office.

And I think that’s the impact that we can have whatever you want to call us, “influencers,” “speakers,” or “messengers.” I like the word “messengers,” but as people who want to make a difference in the world, when we think about the people that we’ve interacted with, we have an opportunity to build them up or tear them down. I just realized a few years ago I was doing more tearing than building and I wanted to switch that around. It’s a lot easier than I thought it would be.

Andrea: Oh, that’s really cool. I think that really applies to even sales. You know you’re actively out there prospecting or talking to people about something that you have to offer. When that’s the case, it can tend to lean towards the whole, I need something from you feeling, but when you are in sales and thinking about, “Now, who do I just need to reach out to just to touch base as a human being?” All of a sudden you become a person to them and that’s really powerful.

Brian Dixon: You know, it’s so funny there’s this kind of what you call it like an agency, like a marketing agency online. And I’ve been following the two guys that own it for awhile. Their stuff is fun, you know. I’ll click on their ads because I kind of like their style. It’s a little aggressive, but it’s funny, you know, and so I reached out to him to say, “Hey, I’d love to work with you guys. Is there a course, like, do you have a weekend boot camp or something like that?” And I also kind of wanted to like learn their system, you know, their sales process because I think they’re doing a good job.

So, as I’m going through the sales process, it went from, you know, a conversation of like, here’s some free content to them trying to sell me a $24,000 six month coaching thing. And it just felt like such a big leap without a lot of information. I’m not against investing in my own business but I just wasn’t ready. It was like I came in for a skateboard and they’re offering a Maserati, you know. It’s just like, it felt weird.

And so, I pushed back on the guy and said, “Wait a second, that’s not what I’m looking for. I’m looking for maybe something a little and more entry level ‘cause I wanna get to know you guys and check out your content.” And he laid into me like, “You’re not ready to like…” It was just weird. So, I thought that was the end of the relationship.

Well, there’s two things first of all regarding sales, number one, I’m telling the story right now, and I’m not going to say their name, but there’s still a bad taste in my mouth about this guy, you know. And then number two, one of his team members followed up with me yesterday. And so I took the call and I said, “Listen, I really like you guys. I like a lot of what you’re doing, but this call, the way it went, just wasn’t effective. And I really feel like this is something you guys could work on. But it doesn’t mean I don’t want to do business with you. I would love to find a way to do business with you and here’s specifically what I’m looking for.”

And here’s the thing, Andrea, he heard it, like, he actually heard it. And I think that we as people of influence, me as messenger have an opportunity to not just serve our clients but to speak truth into the marketplace. And that’s what I did in this conversation. I don’t always get it right. That’s what I did in this conversation, and it’s on them now to fix that brokenness in their process.

I used to think that giving feedback or giving suggestions to other businesses was like arrogance or was not my place. But what I’ve realized is I want somebody to do that for me. You know, if I send an email, and it’s a little too aggressive or too spammy or whatever, especially with my friends hit reply and say, “Hey, Brian, that email was a little off.” I’m like, “Oh, thank you so much, like, what can I do to make it better because we all want to improve?”

So, I think starting with your people means, especially in business, means having this openness to feedback. Now, you don’t change everything you’re doing just because one person said something, right? But being able to listen to feedback and being able to give feedback makes it all a better industry. It makes us better marketers, makes us better messengers, and actually improves the client experience.

Andrea: Hmm. All right, Brian, before we started talking, I asked, or before we started recording, I asked you what’s something that you haven’t gotten to talk about a whole lot but think, you know, you’d like to really be able to address this. And I am so interested in the next part of our conversation. What do you mean by outgrowing your upbringing?

Brian Dixon: We have a choice. In 2018, we we’re recording this, you know, wherever you happen to grow up. This is pretty common knowledge, right? But wherever you happen to grow up, you don’t have to stay there. So for me, I grew up in this little town in Manitoba, Canada and I’ve actually visited that town this last summer. And there are people that went to my elementary school and then went to the same high school I went to and even went to the same college that I went to that are now living in that same town, like they’re still there. Some of them took over their parents’ business, some of them were working, you know, just got normal jobs.

And there’s a little bit of this, not judging them, but from my conversations, there’s this mindset of, “If if I try to do something outside of my family upbringing, then I’m going to be judged.” Or actually this one person used this shunned. “I’m gonna be shunned.”

And I was like, “First of all, I haven’t heard that word. Has anyone used that word in hundreds of years?”

And so it caused me, anytime I hear something like that that applies to somebody else, what I first need to do is check myself and go, “Whoa, how does that apply to me?” And it caused me to realize that as messengers, as people that are trying to launch a book or trying to start a brand or striving to become a speaker or start a podcast, that we’re changing the rules of the relationship. We’re going from, you know, go to college, get a job, live your life to trying to do something really public. And there’s this weirdness in that gap of going from a private person to a public person.

Now, you might even argue in social media in 2019, we’re all kind of public people, you know. But there is a difference when you get intentional about your social and when you get intentional about your website, you know, when you get intentional about your branding that there will be people in your life that are like, “Who does Andrea thinks she is? Who does she think she is to start her own podcast? She’s not an expert. I went to sixth grade with her.” And there’s a weird feeling that we have in going through that, especially when somebody in your family says something, which I think we’ve all heard or heard from somebody else. And I think it’s something we don’t talk about, but it’s so important to process so that we can move forward in boldness and in truth and in grace.

Andrea: All right. So how have you processed to this in your own life, in your own experience? What does that process look like for you?

Brian Dixon: You know, you have to lead with humility and I messed this one up every day, like every day. But that’s where it starts, you know? So for example, like really tangible because I’m a visual person, the cover of my book Start with Your People, there’s these like little avatar pictures, these little cartoon pictures on the front. And the idea was that we start with the people at home and then it moves to our friends and our team. And then eventually it gets to the larger industry, to the influencers and the people that can really make a difference in your career. And the first version of the cover was just a bunch of like random drawings, you know, just like they didn’t represent anybody, just this basic idea.

And as we worked on it, I hired a graphic designer to customize all these avatars. So, every single person on the cover of my book is a real person. And I’m looking at the cover right now. The fifth person is my 93-year-old grandmother. She’s a little avatar on the cover of my book. And the reason I’m mentioning this is because like, she knows me, you know, I’m her grandson. My kids are her great-grandchildren, like she knows me. She’s my 93-year-old grandmother, and I want to be authentic.

Here’s the challenge. We don’t have two lives. You don’t have an online life and an offline life. We don’t have a work life and a home life. We have one life. We are one person, and the Brian Dixon that launches the book, the Brian Dixon that’s on your podcast right now, like the Brian Dickson that shows up on a Facebook ad is the same Brian Dixon who calls his grandmother, you know. I want to be the same person. And that’s where it gets a little weird is when somebody expects you to be, you know, just working in a job and now you’re on social all the time, you know, they see your stuff everywhere.

So what I learned to do is to lead with humility, which is to say, “Hey guys,” like literally an email and a text message to my family this summer before the book came out in September, so like in July and said “Hey guys, just want to let you know, you’re gonna see a lot of me over the next few months. So, I just apologize. You have to know that’s just part of launching a book. It’s not that I’ve changed. It’s not that I’m like suddenly full of myself. It’s just that people don’t pay attention. They need to hear seven to 10 times that there’s a book before they even realize there’s the book. And then they have to see it another seven to 10 times before they even know to buy the book. So you’re going to see a lot of my stuff online. But I want you to know I’m still Brian, I’m still here.” And so that was a message I sent to a few people in my life.

We continue doing things that we would normally do in our life. So, you know, we host a few families that come over every couple of weeks just to build that social connection. So just like, what can we do to keep showing up for the people in our life, even when our career accelerates, even when we get really busy?

And I think that’s the real challenge right there because I’ve seen, Andrea, I’ve seen the inverse. That’s the point, right? I’ve seen people go from, nobody knows them and they’re attending a conference to now they’re the keynote speaker and they don’t have the time, you know, time in their day to just say hello to you, you know? And it’s just like so off-putting, and that’s the big challenge is like as we’re growing in our career how do we maintain authenticity and maintain some of those connections and it can be a big challenge.

Andrea: When you do maintain those connections, how much of your professional life is discussed or is brought in or whether you’re the one that’s bringing it in or not, you know. I mean, do you talk about it?

Brian Dixon: I had to adjust my expectations and I’ve talked to many friends and colleagues you that really doing well online and we have to adjust their expectations. Like my dad, I mean, just to get real personal, like my dad is an author and he hasn’t had a big book like my book was a pretty sizable book. You know, the print, however you measure it, the number of stores it’s in, the number of sales, the advance on the royalties, the number of people on the book launch team, like however you measure it, it was a big book. He hasn’t had one like that. And so that gets a little weird. You know, we both kind of do the same thing. He writes books and launches books. I write books and launch books, and now how do we deal with this thing? And so I think that there’s grace. I think that there’s being polite, you know, so he’ll ask “How’s it going?” But I also don’t have to rub it in his face either, you know. One thing I would just to be totally transparent, I really had to learn that my family is not my audience. You get what I’m saying?

Andrea: Yes!

Brian Dixon: My family is not my audience. And so if I post something online that rubs them the wrong way, first of all, they’re not my audience. I want to honor them, but they’re not my audience. But second of all, I’m not writing for them either, so I’m not writing to impress them, but I’m also not writing to slander them. And that is a weird, weird balance. You want to talk about that?

Andrea: Not writing to impress them, but not writing to slander them either. What do you mean?

Brian Dixon: Yeah. You know, especially writing a book about people, you know, writing a book about relationships like you want to use examples from your life and no matter what you’ve been through and how long you’ve lived, there’s been positive and negative examples. You know, it’s really easy to say, look at what these people have done wrong or look at what I’ve done right. And you want to connect to a reader, but you need to honor the people that are in your life in the way that you do it. And I’m not saying that I did do it right a 100 percent of the time.

I think the books are helpful because you have an editorial process, you know, so your editor can work with you. But especially when you’re posting on social, you know, you’re posting on social and talking about how you had to do this thing that required you to be braver than you normally are. OK, that’s a great post. People want to read that post that’s encouraging. That’s like, “Yeah, way to go.” Like, “Thanks for posting that.”

But what I had to realize in the process is when I use this example from my life, the person in my life might be reading that post and have opinions about it, you know. And what I’ve been learning to do, and I again, I don’t do it well all the time, is learning to check in, you know, so the real tangible. So my wife Julie, before I post something that has anything to do with her, I just say, “Hey, I’m thinking about posting this thing.”

Actually, you know, this happened just before we got on the call. I’m going to send a Facebook messenger broadcast to our messenger list for one of our brands and one of my partners in that I want to use a picture of her face in this message. And I would have just sent it a few years ago because that’s a project over a person just like get the project done. But what I did today, like again, I don’t do it well all the time, but what I did today is I took a screenshot of the message, the preview message and I sent her a Voxer message over to my business partner, I said, “Hey, are you cool with me sending this?” I haven’t heard back from her yet.

So, first of all, I’m like delayed getting this message out, which sucks. But number two is I know this because we’ve been working together for awhile. She feels honored by me taking the time to make sure she’s cool so that I can send that message. Because if I sent it and I didn’t ask her, she’d probably be OK. But maybe, just maybe there’s a little part of her that would say, “Oh, I wish he asked me,” you know. And that’s what it means to Start with Your People, it’s just slowing down, checking in, “Harry, cool, if I post this?” “Are you cool if I tell this story? Are you cool if I share that detail?” Because those are the people that matter even more than your audience, even more than your clients is the people at home, the people that you’re closer to. And we’ve got to do that because it’s so easy to want to over share, you know, and try to build a connection with a real audience, but like burn all the relationships around us.

Andrea: You know, I mean, it’s almost like opening a loop without even telling them.

Brian Dixon: Yes.

Andrea: If you post something or if you’re thinking you’re going to post something or you think you’re going to change something in somebody’s life that’s going to impact somebody else. And to not close that loop and say, “Hey, by the way, is this okay with you?” Or “By the way, this is what’s happening.” It’s being mindful of others and it definitely impacts the way that people perceive how much you respect them.

Brian Dixon: You know, the feedback I’ve gotten on this book is like these are all the things I know like I should be doing with people but like I know it but I don’t do it, you know? And I think that’s a good book, like a good book is a reminder of the things we already believe and maybe some practical examples of like why it matters. And to start with people to see the value of people in your life, to put people first isn’t rocket science. It’s not a brand new concept, but it’s so important because that is right there. That is the difference, and I’m convinced of this, that’s the difference between somebody who’s in this for the long run and somebody who’s there, you know, 18 months and gone.

You know, I’ve been full time online as a messenger, as a marketing guy for six years now. There’s not a lot of people I know that started around the same time as me that are still doing it. And there’s this great book called The Slight Edge and he’s got this graph in the book where basically like “for years you’re at the same level as the people that you like grew up with and then somewhere around your 40’s you start to see this slow divide, you know. And it grows and grows and grows over time.” And that happens in industries too, you know, you see all these people that got into their Instagram messaging or you know, whatever TikTok consulting or like whatever the new thing is, and you give it six months, you give it 12 months, you give it 18 months and people start to burn out and they’re not around anymore. And I don’t want to not be around, you know, I want to be somebody who’s continuing to serve people in 10 years from the future.

I love Don Miller, you know, the author of StoryBrand, he says, “Peak at 65” and I just love that I’m 41 right now. Like, imagine if this isn’t my peak, if my peak is in 24 years from now, like how can I show up for Andrea in such a way that you can’t wait to have me back in a year from now and I’m just a recurring guest on your show, right? And I serve you well and we know each other for the next 24 years. That’s the kind of way I want to treat people in my industry. That’s the way I want to treat my team. And I think that’s what it means to live with people first lifestyle.

Andrea: So good. Brian, what last piece of advice would you like to give the listener on how they can really be a voice of influence?

Brian Dixon: I love that. I love that question. You know, I was skeptical for years, but I become a big believer in these personality tests. You know, the one that opened my eyes was the Enneagram, but there’s Enneagram, Strength Finder, Love Languages, the Kolbe Index. I love the Fascination Advantage. You know, Sally is fascinating.

Andrea: Oh yeah. We know that one well here.

Brian Dixon: You know well. OK, so me knowing that I’m the Victor, like that’s my archetype that tells me how I show up. It tells me how I get filled up. It tells me how I come across to people. And I think one of the best things that you can do if you want to have influence is to understand and read your own manual, understand how the machine works, you know.

How do I get when I’m tired? How do I get when I’m feeling stressed? What do I do when I’m feeling filled up? And to recognize the way that I come across the people, like where’s my zone of genius and where do I totally fail? And knowing that and then being able to surround myself with a team who I’m authentic with, I’m vulnerable with.

They know me; they know what I’m really good at, like what’s my lane. But they also know like, “Don’t ever let Brian touch that thing. You know that one thing. Let him do this, but don’t let him do that.”

That’s how I think you have the greatest influence because you’re in your zone or whatever you want to call it, you’re in flow. And to do that, I believe that right there when you’re living in that sweet spot, that’s where you can make the biggest impact and, here’s the fun part, the biggest income. So for me, I think strategy and I think about the future and what I’m thinking strategy in the future, our company makes a lot more money. But when I’m in the details and the minutiae, I’m slowing everybody down.

So, for you guys to understand, what’s my Enneagram type, what’s my Strength Finder, what’s my Fascination Advantage, Love Language is a big one. Like how do I hear people when they say “Good job,” that doesn’t mean anything, but then they bring me a gift, I’m like “Oh, that meant the world.” Like I need to know those things about myself so that I can speak life into other people.

Andrea: Awesome! Coming from a, like a fellow personality test junky, I echo what you just said. So, Brian, how can people find you and find your book?

Brian Dixon: Oh, I love it. Thanks so much for asking. Well, the books available on Amazon or wherever you buy books and there’s an audio version. It’s on Audible. So the book is called Start with Your People. And I love you guys to pick it up and then, you know, just let’s be people, right? Just connect to me as a person. So I love Instagram. You can send me a message on Instagram. I’m Brian J. Dixon on Instagram, but there’s nothing more fun than you hearing this show and then send me a messenger just tell me, “Hey Brian, this is what I got out of it, or here’s a question that I have. I’d love to continue that conversation with you.

Andrea: Awesome! And if you need any of that, again, we will definitely have that in the show notes on our website. So Brian, thank you so much for sharing your voice of influence with our listeners.

Brian Dixon: Andrea, thanks so much, I appreciate it!

Posted on Monday, October 7, 2019

Creating Emotional Connections with Your Brand with Kerri Konik

Episode 110

Kerri Konik is a leading expert, consultant, and speaker on how to catalyze the emotional bonds between customers, brands, and companies to increase revenue, value retention, and advocacy. Kerri has launched and managed six businesses and is currently the CEO of Inspire Fire, a woman-owned brand marketing advisory firm. She is also the CEO of Equality Communications Group. In this episode, Kerri discusses why she chose her field, the importance of understanding the emotional driver of your customer and what emotions you want them to experience when they use your product or service, the four experience stages she helps her clients create a roadmap for, the value of bringing your potential customers to a state of possibility, the most powerful question she asks her clients, and more!

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Transcript

Hey, hey! It’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast. Today, I have with me Kerri Konik who is a leading expert in maximizing the ROI of emotional connection and customer experiences. I’m super excited to talk to Kerri today. She is a consultant and speaker on how to catalyze the emotional bonds between customers, brands, and companies to increase revenue, value retention, and advocacy. Kerri has launched and managed six businesses and is currently the CEO of Inspire Fire, a woman-owned brand marketing advisory firm as well as the CEO of Equality Communications Group.

Andrea: Kerri, it is great to have you here today on the Voice of Influence podcast.

Kerri Konik: Hello, hello. Thank you so much. It’s a pleasure to be with you.

Andrea: All right. I love emotional connection. Love this idea. Why does this topic of emotional connection? Why did you choose this topic? How did you get started here?

Kerri Konik: Uhh, well, I started working with brands and products, consumer products, and groups back when I was in New York, and I worked with the New York Times and I worked with Campbell Soup and services as well as products. The most valuable component beyond having an item of value, an item of quality is how people feel about it, which became branding, right? What is the brand relationship between your customer and your product or your service? And yeah, it does a thing, you know; let’s say you bought a shoe polisher. Yes, a polisher or shoes. It’s a quality product. It does what it’s supposed to do, but the relationship actually lives in how they feel about what you enable them to be able to do because of what you did, if that makes sense. So, I start to notice of the most important piece to a brand or a brand’s growth, and this is true for startup brand or a very small solopreneur type brand is the customer connection. And that connection is an emotional connection. Like after it’s all said and done, how did they feel now? Are they like totally in love with that experience? Do they refer you? You know the quote by Maya Angelou, “People won’t remember what you said, but they’ll remember how you made them feel.”

Andrea: Absolutely.

Kerri Konik: Yeah, so it’s like, “Yeah, yeah, I got the shoe polish and it was great in it polished my shoes. But what it did was it enabled me to look awesome on that stage and I felt like one million bucks. So what it did was it raised my courage and my confidence so I could go full out.” So that’s an emotional _____ what we call the emotional solution you really provide.

Andrea: I love that. It seems like it is not the easiest thing to achieve though. How do you help or what do you suggest or how do you approach this whole idea when somebody calls you and says, “Kerri, we need help connecting with our customers so that they actually feel like whatever we want them to feel like.” Or do they even know what they want them to feel like when they contact you?

Kerri Konik: Usually not. That’s a great, great question. And actually it’s really, really easy to unpack and get at it once you know what you’re looking for. Like if you’re going fishing and you know exactly what fish you’re looking for and how they like to swim and if you know the behavior of the fish. So, what happens when we do get those phone calls where they know that their brand or the experience was transactional and one thing, you know, they bought it and they were satisfied. It was like, “Yeah, that’s great.” “Yeah, it was fine. Thanks.” But there’s no emotional connection like, “Oh my God, I have to tell my friend Andrea about this.” There’s no like emotional experience.

So, one thing I say is there’s always an emotional transaction before there’s a commercial transaction. So, what we do is we _____ with the brand and we get at the core of the brand identity. And there’s four components to that, so we help them look at in what problem do you solve to your product, to your service, and who’s your audience. Who do you solve it for, and that’s the most important piece. And then why do you do what you do and that’s more for the business owner or the brand purpose. And then we look at the why, which is why do you do that, but we look at the _____ behind it and that really helps fuel the brand. But we look at the emotional solutions like, so what’s possible? And I just demo that a little bit with you, Andrea, with the shoe shine. It’s like, “Yeah, I bought shoe polish.” There’s nothing very emotionally connected about that, right? It’s transactional. It’s like “My shoes are scruffy. I wanna look good on stage. I have to buy this, you know, $6 item.

But, oh my God, the packaging was incredible. The customer service was great. They helped me match my shoes. And when I got on that stage, I knew I looked like one million bucks from head to toe and I love Kiwi,” or whatever the brand might be. And so that love figuring out in the core four of the identity, the who, what is your customer emotionally motivated by? So there are two sides to that, a little bit of education here, right? So, on the one side is what’s the emotional driver like your customer, you know, what do they want? How do they want to feel? They should buy a shoe polish. I don’t want a shoe polish today, but here we are. Well, she wants to feel confident. She wants to feel like she’s buttoned up and looks great, right?

So, she wants to feel confident, let’s just say. OK, so that’s her motivator. Nobody wants to spend 6 bucks on shoe polish if they don’t have to. Nobody wants braces either, you know. So, when you get clear about the driver then when you craft the sales experience, the purchase experience, the product unboxing experience, that I just kind of mentioned, and it’s lovely. Or it is in alignment with her or his or their emotional driver and you satisfy that driver, you design the moment what we call the touch point in that experience of buying shoe polish where you design what is the emotional goal of that moment.

And so if you know who he, she, or they are and what they’re after and it’s pretty true across the board why anybody would buy a shoe polish, that’s actually a good example for today. And then when you actually deliver personality or experience or messaging that then resonates and aligns to that, so you’re creating an emotional connection moment that they receive and now there’s a bond and there’s an emotional reaction and an emoting. So, this is where you’re going to say, “Oh my gosh.” You couldn’t see it, but once you see it, you can’t unsee it. We’re humans, right? We’re human beings and we’re actually programmed.

We’re emotional beings. We respond emotionally, first and foremost every time, from the moment we were pre-verbal, inside the womb, inside being a baby, we didn’t have words. We didn’t have language. We had emotion. So we’re hardwired for this. And so once we work with our clients and we work with small businesses and growing businesses, but once we figured out, OK, who are they, what’s the emotional driver and then let’s architect experience to create experiences with the right emotion at the right time then the customer is like in love. They’re so loyal, they’re “Oh my gosh, I would never go anywhere else.” We all have these experiences and I can give you a couple of questions and like boom, I could get you emoting about your favorite brands.

Andrea: Love it. OK, so let’s go back to this example that you’re using with a shoe polish and confidence. So, if in general that is what the customer’s wanting, they’re wanting to feel confident, but you’re saying that there are different touch points at which there might be different emotions that you’re trying to evoke. What other different emotions you might be touching on when the overall emotion is confidence?

Kerri Konik: Uhh, great! OK, so the confidence is what they want for why they’re buying or shopping the category of shoe polish anyway, right? So, they have an event. Usually, there’s a reason they’re buying it, right? Their shoes are scruffy. Their boots are scruffy. They have an event. I used the example of being on a stage. So, maybe someone, and we can shift genders here, maybe he is going for his big job interview up in New York City and he’s taking a train and everything like just came out of MBA or just came out of undergrad, right? Everything’s riding on this moment, right? Think of that anticipation.

Think about the emotions involved with, “Huh, this has to go right. I’m gonna do everything I can. I’m gonna iron my shirt. I’m gonna polish my shoes. I’m gonna press my jacket. I’m gonna dry clean.” So, if you know who the audience is, why would you buy a shoe polish or all these scenarios, but it’s because you want to be spiffy. You don’t want to be scruffy. And so confidence might be one and that’s a really nice broad emotional goal, right? So, that’s the shopping experience. That’s the overall arch, like why would anybody buy that? I’d rather buy an ice cream sundae. Nobody wants to spend 6 bucks or 10 bucks on shoe polish.

So, the question of backing up when you’re a brand and you are a manufacturer of the best shoe polish in the world and when we look at the emotional connection, there are different emotions because they’re not ready to buy when they first find out about you. So, we actually help our clients create a roadmap, you know, you’ve heard the term, the customer journey, where we do emotional customer journeys. We do an ECX roadmap where we start a stage of marketing and we go into the sales process, because they’re not a customer yet, and I’ll walk you through slower. And then the delivery, what’s it like to get it, to buy it, to use it. You know, “What if I’ve never done it before? Are you gonna send me videos of how to do it well from doing it myself?”

And then the loyalty of what we call the retention stage. So the four stages we help with; we look at marketing, sales experience, the delivery experience, and then the loyalty or retention experience. So, for example, I have this big gig in New York City. I have a big important meeting, my shoes, I pull them out, “Oh my gosh, they’re scruffy. I need shoe polish.” So, maybe I’ll take to Google, right? Or I’ll ask my friend, “Hey, where do you buy shoe Polish?” So you’re going to ask and then they become aware of you. And so the marketing stage is they don’t know about you before. They didn’t need you before, now they need you.

So, now they become aware. The different emotions of that journey where if you look at the marketing, if they Google and they find your website or they find your product in Target or they find your product on Amazon, they just became aware you can’t sell them confidence. And we’re not going to look directly at confidence; we create the atmosphere of confidence but they’re not there yet.

Andrea: Can you hold on just a second, because you just said you do not talk directly about confidence, you create the atmosphere of confidence. I just want to pause on that for just a second because I think that’s a really an important thing for people to hear.

Kerri Konik: If it’s OK to switch metaphors, I have a really great example.

Andrea: Go for it.

Kerri Konik: All right and we do this all the time. You have a great keen ear, Andrea, for that because when you’re playing with somebody’s emotions, you don’t go straight at the emotions, especially if it’s a pain point. And the reality is it’s always a pain point because we’re trying to solve a problem when we’re buying something. So, you have scruffy shoes. So, we wouldn’t say if we went head on and we went after the shame that would be a bad idea.

Andrea: Right.

Kerri Konik: So, we said, “Are your shoes scruffy? That’s not very confident, is it?” What you’re doing is you’re shaming, right? We don’t go after the confidence straight. The other example I’m going to give you is we’ve worked with professional organizing brands before where people who hire a professional organizer have kind of lost control of the calm and organization and the peace in their home. And that can be anywhere in the continuum of being just a little bit messy because let’s say their in-law has moved in and their lives have been disrupted or they have toddlers or they added a dog.

That’s one level of being disorganized or having to like reevaluate flow in your home all the way across the continuum to someone who might be a hoarder, right? Well, you wouldn’t go right after somebody who is embarrassed to have anybody come over to their home, doesn’t have dinner parties anymore, doesn’t go out, or doesn’t invite anybody in because they don’t want anybody to see the state of chaos in their home. So, you wouldn’t go right after that shame. What you would do instead is create an atmosphere or you would normalize the problem and say, “We all get disorganized.” This is really sort of an advance, I’m sorry to go there.

Andrea: No, I think this is great.

Kerri Konik: OK. So, and I have a more severe example as well in which everybody can relate to, but you wouldn’t say “Hi, are you embarrassed? Are you ashamed of the state of your house?” So, you wouldn’t do that because someone’s going to run for the hills, right? They’re not going to resonate and they’re not going to feel OK and they’re certainly not going to invite you in to help. But if you say, “Hey, all of us have times when our house gets beyond us, we can help.”

Andrea: Yes!

Kerri Konik: So, you’re talking to the shame, you’re talking to that part of human being who feels really embarrassed, you’re talking to it, but you’re not adding fire or gasoline to the issue. You’re adding calm and relaxation and you’re normalizing the problem. And a more obvious place, let’s say somebody was on a bridge and look like they might want to jump. If you were going to try to help that person, you wouldn’t say, “Are you going to jump?” Say “Hey, hey, what’s going on? Come here, talk to me. Come here, come here.” Like you would kind of try to talk them off the ledge.

Andrea: Yeah.

Kerri Konik: That’s what we do emotionally at different stages of the connection between two people or two parties, in this case, the brand and the consumer.

Andrea: Yes. This is really, really good and it’s really, really important, especially in light of what we’ve tried to accomplish at Voice of Influence. When people want to have influence, they should not be speaking directly to the shame to make it worse. But they should be speaking to the shame to calm it down to say, “This happens to everybody, it’s OK,” kind of helping them.

I mean, I think everybody who’s listening right now can feel how, you know, the difference between the tension that you feel when somebody calls you out on something that’s bad versus saying, “OK, look, we all go through this. This is hard for everybody. I totally understand and here’s a way out.” I mean there is so much more. It’s such an easier path. Like you said, when people feel better, they feel more emotionally connected to you because you’ve made them feel good like you said.

Kerri Konik: Yeah. Like I said, it’s human nature, right? Now that we’ve planned that out, it’s like, “Oh, it’s OK, I get it. I’ve been there too,” if that’s true. But it’s like, “Yeah, no worries. Hey, we help people with this. It’s a temporary situation, so we’ll fix it.”

Andrea: Exactly. Yes, yes not catastrophizing it.

Kerri Konik: Yeah.

Andrea: Not making it like you are this bad person or you are the person who always has scruffy shoes.

Kerri Konik: So, now that we’ve handled that one, the piece about the marketing, when they first discover you, they try literally tripped onto your brand, your website, or your product and they know nothing about you. So, what needs to happen is there needs to be a little bit of, they’re not even curious or interested quite yet. So, the messaging and the connection goal is maybe moving them into a state of curiosity or a state of possibility.

Andrea: Possibility, I love that.

Kerri Konik: Yeah and then moving them into being inspired or excited by buying shoe polish and then you can be like be your confidence self, right? You see this on advertising, a 30 second spot every day, every day. It can be done very quickly, but it’s the right emotional goal at the right time. But the overarching, you know, nobody needs or wants to spend money in that category. And that’s true for most of the stuff we buy, actually. It’s what we want from the thing we’re buying.

Andrea: Oh yeah, absolutely that was so powerful. You just shared so much that applies absolutely directly to the customer experience, but also to our experience of life with people. So that’s fantastic. Why do you care about this topic?

Kerri Konik: Uhh. Well, I’m really, really most passionate. I mean, we can brand or we can do marketing and emotional CX for anything, but I’ve chosen to help small businesses in particular. I used to be a chief creative officer for food, drug, cosmetic, luxury brands, and worked with some of the most emotional icon brands you would all know and aspire to have in your home or in your closet. But that doesn’t really change the world for me. So, when we were working with, you know, really huge iconic brands that are amazing, that doesn’t really change the world or make progress in the world and we can move the needle, we can sell more volume, but where my heart, my passion, and my purpose lives is leveling the playing field for business owners, right?

So people who have the courage to set out on their own and do something that they’re looking to accomplish. So, I shifted and bring all my chief creative officer knowledge from big agency strategies and packaged it up and bring it to the smaller underdog, if you will. And the reason is because I want to level the playing field between the small business owner competing with the really giant marketer. Let’s say you did shoe and shoe polish and you’re going up against Nike, right? That’s like a David and Goliath thing. So, I’m not always for the underdog. But what I’m for is leveling the playing field, so small business owners can not only survive but grow and make the positive impact in the world that they came into make through their business. That’s my why.

Andrea: Yeah. I love that. So when you’re going through and helping people or helping brands to be able to kind of identify what their why is, or maybe they already know what their why is, how does that connect to the way that you helped them with the customer experience?

Kerri Konik: I just had a conversation yesterday with a really fast growing brand in the southern hemisphere. And they’re growing so fast and as you know, at the end of the day, you have to evolve your brand message, your marketing because your purpose needs to be obvious. And that entrepreneur, the owner said, “Well, my purpose is crystal clear. This is what it is.” And I’m like, “Great that you know but the world doesn’t know that, it’s not in your brand messaging.” And so chances are, if a brand has started and they’ve got some sea legs and proof of concept is there and they’re surviving, the purpose is now known. But it’s not in their appearance.

So let’s take a big brand like Apple or Virgin Records, right? You can name the founder of both of those organizations and you can then pretty quickly dial right into what they stand for, right? So what does Steve stands for? What is Richard stands for? That’s the purpose that as the brand grows, it doesn’t become like the core messaging of like trying to sell the sneakers or sell the iPod or sell the computer. But it becomes what you stand for and what you’re about and the possibility that you’re creating.

With Steve, it was about changing the way people relate to each other through technology. And for Richard, it’s in his book the cover, “Screw it, Let’s do it.” It’s about empowering going for it and creating something that never existed before. The pure meaning of creativity, which is creating something that doesn’t exist yet. So, that purpose fuels the brand. And you know, Apple is 45 years old, and I don’t know how old Richard when he started, about 40 years old also, right? So that why becomes bigger than the entrepreneur, it becomes the vision of the brand. So, one of the most powerful questions we ask a brand, and we just put this on Instagram yesterday, is “What are you trying to accomplish? You know, what would you like to accomplish through your company?” Which cuts right to the core of the heart and soul of purpose? “I want to create a lot of computers.” “Why?” “So that people everywhere have a voice and can express themselves, you know.” Boom!

And then as a brand becomes more and more successful, they talk less about product marketing, product promotion, and they talk more about brand marketing. That’s what we really specialize in is elevating the brand, not necessarily the product. So, we don’t do product marketing. We don’t do, you know, the latest sneakers, the latest jeans, or fashion apparel, we elevate the brand. And not the brand story and storytelling, but more about the brand’s purpose and how it changes you and your life. That’s how brands grow, really.

Andrea: Hmm, love it. OK, Kerri, so how do you work or what are some things that you offer? I know that you’ve got a podcast that you’re launching. Tell me a little bit about where people can find you and how they can work with you.

Kerri Konik: Oh, thanks. Well, Inspire Fire is the name of our core brand and we are launching a podcast hopefully in Q4, yes, yes, yes and it’s going to be about customer experience. It’s really going to be about inspiring fire and emotional connection that ROI. What does that mean? How do you do it specifically for small brands so that they can grow and change more lives, make a greater impact, whether it’s just for your own family, your community, or changing the world, you know, however broad or your ripple effect is. So Inspire Fire, you can Google us. You’ll find us on Instagram and our websites inspirefire.com and I’m on all of the social platforms as well. And we love talking to small business owners who are really looking to leverage that big, big, big throttle called emotional connection so that they can like propel their brand forward farther, farther, faster we say.

Andrea: And you mentioned before we started recording that you even have some, it’s not just a matter of we need to do this really big consulting with you, but you’ve also got for small brands, you have something for them to, is that right?

Kerri Konik: Yeah, definitely. The big shift from moving from big iconic brands with huge budgets to small brands with modest budgets is we productize, packaged up our services in what we call Lego modules. And the two we talked about earlier what I mentioned to you is called Calibrate, which is a CX customer journey auditing discovery, strategic initiative that’s really affordable to any small business including a startup. Although there’s nothing to look at it with a startup, right? Not yet. And the other service we do is we architect that Resonance Roadmap where it’s a strategic engagement, but really looking at what is the experience end to end.

And then we can help them with system. They identify systems and processes and automation and digital tools that they need to build. We don’t build those, but we identify those and then we reconstruct or add touch points into what they’re currently doing to really advance the emotional connection. And you know, pricing, it’s not expensive stuff. It’s just adding a moment that’s meaningful and memorable into key stages. So, we always add a stage in the shift between marketing and sales. Because what happens is your prospect or your visitor, their identity changes with you. Your relationship changes in every stage, so we help you look at them. In the Resonance Roadmap, when there’s just a browser, they’re just checking out and they shift into being a prospect.

That’s a different relationship. And what can you do? What should you do there? And then in the delivery, they’ve become a customer. It’s a brand new relationship, right? They decided to marry you or get engaged at least and that needs to be memorialized through meaningful moments. So that’s also a service that even the small businesses can afford to invest in. We’re doing several of these right now and if the brand is up and running, we highly recommend that people do this because it changes who they hire or don’t hire. It puts in systems. It puts in technology, what my friend Paul Sokol calls the Digital Plumbing.

So those services are really affordable. So it’s not branding. And people say, “Well, I know you’re a brand expert. You know, we don’t want to change our brand. We just want to grow our company.” That’s what I’m talking about. The other thing, we also really fix is we laser fix the messaging in the marketing state so that positioning statement lands emotionally. It makes sense to the target audience, phone rings. That is always upside down. We literally flip people’s messaging literally upside down. We focus on making it customer centric and not you, not what we call narcissistic. It’s never about you in all of the communications throughout the entire journey. But how do you say what you’re trying to say in a way that’s about them? So we have a messaging offer as well called the Messaging Matrix where we solve for nine distinct verbal marketing messaging assets, and boom, they run with it and they grow more and then they come back and we’ll do some more things with them.

We try to make really our services are strangely affordable and it’s because like I get it. You know, I’ve started six businesses, and investing in your own brand growth is expensive. You don’t have a line item for that usually, not yet, you need to. We make it affordable and we make it modular so you can _____ then you get the ROI. You know, you sell one or two client engagements, boom, that’s paid for, now let’s do the next one. I just had a meeting before talking to you, Andrea, where they said, “OK, that’s nice to have. You know what we have to do now and we’ll come back and get that in Q1.” I’m like “Perfect.” So you know, we can make it bite-sized or we can take on three-year engagement also.

Andrea: That sounds awesome. OK, so you’ve just shared so much with our audience. I’m so grateful. Thank you so much, Kerri. But I’m going to ask you one more thing. If you could leave this Voice of Influence audience with one tip to help them to grow their voice of influence, what would you say?

Kerri Konik: Getting crystal clear, clarity on who you serve. Who’s your client, it’s not everybody. I know you could probably do something for everybody, like let’s say you work with women. That’s a really way too big. Getting clear on exactly what kind of person, what kind of woman or man, who do you work with? What problem do you solve for them? Once you know who they are then identifying what drives them emotionally. And we have tried actually, I don’t know if you want to offer this to your group. There was a great article in HBR that talked about the 10 emotional motivator drivers and I’d be happy to make that available to you, Andrea, and you could share it with your folks.

Andrea: Sure.

Kerri Konik: But once we know that, you have a lot more insight to grow, because once you’re clear, “Oh, OK, and I sell shoe polish to anybody who has scruffy shoes and wants more confidence.” Boom, that alone, that alone would change and move the needle in sales if you knew that and started messaging and marketing around that, around what you say and who you say it to. And I’m talking psychographically, demographically, where you put that message, where you don’t put that message, who your customer is not, “Come on, stop marketing, stop wasting money,” doing that sort of thing. So that kind of clarity and then you identify their emotional driver and then you look at your own experience and you can architect like what’s it like to call us, what’s it like to buy their thing from us? What’s the sales process look like? Do they come through a register and give you a $10 piece of cash and you give them a thing in a bag and say, buy, you know, what is going on? And then what should go on, right? And then change it, just little steps.

If the devil is in the details, the profit and the gold mine is in the… Every detail sends a signal. If you think it doesn’t matter, you’re killing your brand or you’re killing your sales, everything matters. And you can consciously decide not to handle something, I get it. But everything does send a signal because we are sponges, we are emotionally connected and we’re taking in and creating meaning out of everything. That’s a whole other conversation about what happens with the messages that are going into the brain of your client, but they’re noticing everything, not necessarily consciously. But if you just change one or two things, and every time you get a moment, up-level the next little thing, you’ll see your sales go up. You can add a zero to your revenue, guaranteed. It’s what we do every day. It’s amazing. That’s what I love to do.

Andrea: Awesome! Thank you so much, Kerri! Thank you for sharing your voice of influence with our listeners.

Kerri Konik: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Posted on Monday, September 30, 2019

Find Joy in Choosing to Miss Out with Tonya Dalton

Episode 109

Tonya Dalton is a productivity expert, speaker, the author of The Joy of Missing Out, and the CEO and Founder of Inkwell Press; a company that’s centered around productivity tools and training. She has been featured in Real Simple, Entrepreneur INC., Apartment Therapy, and several other places.

In this episode, Tonya shares how she came up with the perspective and title for her book, why she refers to herself as a “recovering perfectionist” and how she accomplished that, the difference between actually wanting something and only wanting it because you think you’re supposed to, the importance of finding a balance between doing something well and letting perfection stop you from moving forward, her advice for making decisions with your ultimate mission for your business in mind, the negative impacts of overwhelm, why she wants you to throw away your to-do list, the main thing she wants people to understand after reading her book, and more!

Mentioned in this episode:

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcript

Hey, hey! It’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast. Today, I have with me Tonya Dalton. She is the CEO and founder of inkWELL Press and the author of; get this, The Joy of Missing Out. I’m so excited to talk with her about her book today. Tonya is a productivity expert, writer, speaker, and as we previously mentioned, the founder of inkWELL Press. It’s a company that centered around productivity tools and training. She has been featured on Real Simple, Entrepreneur, Inc., Apartment Therapy, and bunch of other places.

Andrea: So, excited to talk with you, Tonya, about your book today, The Joy of Missing Out.

Tonya Dalton: I am excited to be here. I can’t wait.

Andrea: So first of all, I want to start with the title because it is such a great reframe of that familiar FOMO kind of a feeling that people have all of the time. We’re always worried about missing out on things. And at the very beginning of your book you define it as JOMO. I love that. And you say “It is about intentionally choosing to live in the present moment by embracing open spaces of unrushed time.” Tell me about how you first of all came up with The Joy of Missing out as the title of your book and why you think it matters to people? Why this reframe?

Tonya Dalton: Well, I think you’re so right when you say so many people have this fear of missing out, and I feel like I see again and again where people are overwhelmed. They’re stretching themselves so incredibly thin because every single time that opportunity knocks, they feel like “I got to answer that door,” right? “Opportunity only knocks once, so I got to answer it.”

And so, here they are opening that door again and again and again not even necessarily the things that are meaningful to them or things that feel good. We just opened that door to opportunity because we think we’re supposed to and we fear missing out that if we let this go by that it’s never going to come back again.

And so, really, for me as an entrepreneur, as a mom, as a wife, as a CEO, and as a former perfectionist; I like to call myself a recovering perfectionist because it is something I struggle with as well, I found myself in that same situation where I was saying yes to too many things. I was not really actively choosing how I spent my days because I was in this fear of missing out. So, when I really started to reframe my life and make it so I was living more intentionally, both in my business and in my personal space, I found that I was so much happier.

I was doing less, but I was feeling so much happier. And I was actually achieving more because I was able to give my time, my energy, and my focus to these fewer tasks that were more meaningful and were really more important driving me closer to that North Star. And so when it was time to name this book, I was thinking about, you know, we obviously went through a lot of different titles and what could this be called. I thought about playing on that word overwhelmed because I hear that so much from so many people.

But really when it came down to it and I thought about it, it really is about the joy of missing out. That when we think of our ideal day, when we daydream while we’re in the shower or we’re standing in line at Starbucks waiting for our coffee, we think about this ideal day and there’s a lot of amazing things in it. But there’s also some key things that are missing, stress, overwhelm, feeling stretched too thin, saying yes out of obligation and guilt instead of saying yes out of, you know, happiness and excitement.

So, to me, there is joy in those missing pieces, in those things being gone. So, let’s really structure our life so we can actively choose to miss out and then focus our life on what we really want to do and what’s truly important to us.

Andrea: Oh, I love that. One of the tools that you use is this idea of, is it clear, is that what it’s called?

Tonya Dalton: Yes, the clear framework?

Andrea: The clear framework. I mean, it’s connected to your North Star, linked to a goal, having been essential, advantageous and reality-based. And I’ll let the listener actually read your books to find out most of that. But I lived the last one, in particular I wanted to pull this out, you talked about asking yourself if it’s really reality-based and you say on page 98, “Oftentimes we feel something is important because we believe it’s something we are supposed to do even if it’s not something we really want.”

Tonya Dalton: Yes.

Andrea: That is so true. OK, why do we do this? Why do we think that we are supposed to want things?

Tonya Dalton: Well, I think there’s this whole obligation. If you pay attention and you look around you and you check out the social media, it feels like everybody’s doing it all and doing it extraordinarily well, right? I mean that #allthethings that’s on a lot of posts and then we see this glorification of busy.

You know, I’ve seen posters and bags and I’ve seen notebooks that say “I am very busy.” Like, that’s a badge of honor, because I feel that when we are not busy, we somehow worry that we are failing, that we’re not doing enough, that we should be filling our days running from things to things.

And so in order to do that, we just cram our day full without really paying attention to what we really truly want to do. So, we have all of this, you know, pressure from society and from these stories that we tell ourselves. You know, a lot of us have these stories about what a good mom always does. A good is always there when her kids get off the bus or a good boss always stays later than their team. A good entrepreneur never stops working.

So, it’s these ideas that are so unrealistic, but they become this truth to us. There are these stories that we tell ourselves that often are not really stepped in our own values, but things that other people have kind of pushed onto us. And because of this, we lean into a lot of our perfectionism tendencies. And that’s what I question, is this reality based comes in because when that clear framework is designed to help you really discern whether something is important or unimportant.

Because that line becomes really blurred and it’s easy when it’s black or white, you know, good or bad. It’s harder when it’s good, better and best, when that area becomes gray. So, this question of is it reality based is really are you telling yourself a story that you are supposed to do this even though it’s not really tied to the life you want?

I feel like we go through life and we see these pictures and these images in magazines and on Pinterest. And we scroll through Facebook and we see these people with these exquisitely designed desks, you know, and these office spaces and we think, “Oh my gosh, I cannot start a podcast until I have this beautiful space to do my podcast because that’s what everybody else has.” I’m going to be honest with you, those people who have those pictures of those beautiful spaces probably cleared out a lot of stuff.

Andrea: They definitely are not looking at me right now in my husband’s closet.

Tonya Dalton: Well, you know, I have a podcast with over a million downloads and I still record it in my closet. You know why, because _____ are so good and it’s readily available.

Andrea: Exactly.

Tonya Dalton: So, yeah, it’s not Instagram worthy but it is working and that’s really what’s important. So, the reality I could tell myself is “Oh, I can’t podcast because I don’t have this beautiful space or I don’t have like a studio or having a studio,” when really I just drag a table and a chair and I go down in my closet just like you do. And you’re able to create something amazing because you didn’t wait, because you didn’t get caught up in that story of what you were supposed to have it look like or what we really want in life when really what you really wanted was to have a podcast.

Andrea: Absolutely.

Tonya Dalton: You know it’s not about the fancy office; it’s really about what are we creating and putting forth into the world.

Andrea: I think that that you’ve brought up another really important point that’s almost like an extension of this idea of what do you really want, and that is that we put things in between ourselves and what we really want in the pursuit of perfection, in the pursuit of doing it really well. There are times when we need to be careful. I’ve noticed, I was just listening this week and I tweeted something out, I was like, “There are a lot of podcasts out there put together by people who are selling really high end programs who don’t edit their podcasts and it just absolutely drives me crazy.”

Tonya Dalton: Yeah.

Andrea: So, there is a sense of like “But we need to do what we’re doing well.” Where do you see the harmony or the balance of wanting to make sure that we actually, you know, pursue the goal and actually execute on it versus putting something in between ourselves and that whole idea of not doing it well enough? Where should we find our balance there?

Tonya Dalton: Right. You know, I’m not going to start to, “I have to have it perfect.” Where is that middle ground of where it’s good enough, yeah? I love this question because you’re right, I mean, yes, it’s OK to do the podcast in your closet but take the time and the care to really edit it. And I think probably what ends up happening for a lot of these people who are not really editing their podcasts is there’s not that care behind it.

To me, taking the time to edit your podcast presented in a way that’s professional that represents you and your brand that shows a lot of meaning. It shows a lot of thoughts and intention behind it. And I think that’s where we really need to draw the line is what is your intention with whatever it is you’re putting forth. If your intention that it’d be absolutely positively flawless, because if that’s your intention, I’m sorry, but that’s not going to happen because perfection does not exist.

So, we don’t want to get stymied by this idea that it has to be perfect, but what’s in that middle ground? What’s really acceptable? And to me, all of this comes down to this idea of your North Star, which we talked about in the first section of the book, but it’s essentially your mission, your vision, and your core values. So, everything that I do, everything that I present, everything; whether it’s writing a book or a course or it’s a podcast or whatever it is, does this work with my North Star? I use that as my filter.

And so, if it really does filter through this North Star, if it’s why I do what I do, which is my mission, where I want to go with my business, which is my vision and how I want to get there, which is one of my core values, that’s really what helps me make those decisions. So, for example, one of the parts of the North Star for the inkWELL Press brand is our core value is excellence. That I’m not going to put something out there unless I feel like this is a benefit to my customers and it’s presented in a way that’ll be meaningful to them.

So, perfection is not one of my core values. Having things to be absolutely, you know, flawless or with no mistakes. That’s not really part of my brand because there needs to be an element of authenticity there that we are humans and it’s OK to show some softer sides of ourselves. But two, because everything is filtered through your North Star, you’re not trying to do so much that you don’t have time to edit the podcast.

If you want to do a podcast, do the best podcast you can. That doesn’t mean being perfect but what’s the best vision of what that could look like for you and sit down and map that out. Does it mean that you have to have, you know, some fancy editor editing your podcast? Probably not. You can use GarageBand on your Mac and edit your podcast. It doesn’t take a lot of work to really, you know, take the time to Google up a couple of, you know, YouTube videos on how to edit your podcast. So again, if it’s meaningful, you’re going to do it right. And I think that’s really where this comes into play this idea of whether you want it to be perfect or just start finding that middle ground of what’s acceptable for you and your North Star.

Andrea: Mission, vision, values, this North Star, this is something that we don’t necessarily call it North Star but we talk about this a lot. And so, I am so curious when you talk about actually applying it, how does this work when you are making decisions? Do you have it like put up someplace on some board on your wall and you go to that and say, OK, does that fit this, this and this? Or is it just now ingrained in your head? Or how do you recommend that people who are really just starting out trying to make sure that everything fits their North Star? How do you recommend that they do this, like what is the practical application of that?

Tonya Dalton: Yes, so what I would say is when you’re first starting with your North Star to write it out because you want to put it in a place where it becomes really easy to integrate into your everyday life. Now, what you know, one of the things that’s really key I think with your mission and your vision statement especially is that they’re short. They should be concise. They should be kind of to the point. You don’t want these long fancy words that don’t really have any meaning. You want that to be meaningful to you.

So, really making sure that it’s concise and short enough that you could memorize it so that when an opportunity comes up you can say, “OK does this really fit why I do what I do?” Your mission statement, “Does this really fit what I’m wanting our company to do?” Then you look at the vision of “Is this going to get me closer to my vision of where we need to go?” So, having that written out to start really does help because you can actually literally ask yourself the question that’s written out on the page.

You know, for example, the inkWELL Press North Star is to provide productivity tools and trainings that empower you to achieve your goals and dreams. So, when an opportunity comes up, I ask myself, “Is this really going to help people empower them to get closer to their goals?” If this is not going to get them closer to their goals and this is just in some way to elevate myself or something that’s, you know, extra then that doesn’t really fit that mission statement. So, you just turn it around and make it work for you. But eventually that mission statement, that vision statement of your core values become just so internalized that those questions become a little more natural.

But here’s the thing that I think is important too is those things are always evolving. Your mission statement that you had two years ago may not apply now. So, I think it’s really important to make sure that you are revisiting that mission and the vision and the core values to see if it really does still fit with where you want to go and how you want to get there.

Andrea: OK, I totally agree, re-evaluating is so important; question though, what about the person who is saying to themselves “Yeah, but this would still really help people.” They see something that would be good for them to do and even though it doesn’t quite fit the mission, it still would really help people and I feel this obligation to help people. What do you say to them?

Tonya Dalton: Well, here’s where we get into that thing with opportunity knocking, “Oh but this would somehow be good because of…” We can always make up excuses why something is good. Here’s what I would say to you, every time you say yes to an opportunity, to a project, to a task, you are saying no to something else.

Andrea: Bingo!

Tonya Dalton: So, yes, this opportunity that comes up that may help other people, but could I help people better if I was not spending my time on this and instead spending it on what is truly part of my mission, my vision, and my core values. So, really thinking that through every time you say yes you’re saying no to something else. Take that time to really pour your time, energy, and focus into that North Star because that’s really when you will help people the most.

Andrea: I think that it’s really a muscle that people have to kind of build up because it’s often people who are really creative and caring who have the hardest time with this, like they want to do so many things. They want to help in so many ways and it’s hard for them to recognize that; wait a second, I need to stop for a second and ask that question that you just, you know, presented which would help people more. And it’s a hard question to ask. It’s a hard question to answer, but it’s so important and I’m really glad that you are helping people with that.

Again, I encourage people to get the book to be able to really help themselves think through these things.

All right, let’s shift gears just slightly. So on page 111, I want to go to that as well. You talked about overwhelm and you kind of give this example from a Stanford University study. Can you tell us a little bit about that and how overwhelm really affects us?

Tonya Dalton: Well, you know that feeling when you get to the end of your day and it’s time to eat dinner and you think, “All right, what do we want for dinner?” And then you can’t think of a single thing.

Andrea: Oh yes!

Tonya Dalton: You can’t even think of a single restaurant or anything that you make out of the pantry. Like there’s just no thought in your mind and you feel just literally brain dead. That feeling is a reality. That’s a real feeling. It’s actually called decision fatigue. And what happens is our brain is burning all of its calories, making all these little minute decisions in our day.

You see, our brain is literally 2% of our body and yet it burns 20% of our calories every single day. Your brain is this calorie burning machine. So, every time we make a decision, whether it’s a big decision or a small decision, we’re burning calories.

So, when you get to the end of the day, when you’ve made all these like little minute decisions where you’re spreading yourself really thin, making all these choices instead of using habits and routines and automations to your advantage, we end up burning through all those calories. And your brain is like, “Nope, I’m done. I’m not making any more decisions.” And it quite frankly can’t. This is why, you know, even though we’ve eaten healthy all day, we’ll eat that cookie that’s been sitting in the break room for two days at the end of the day, right?

Or when we’ve gone on a shopping trip why we would buy three pairs of shoes at the very end of the shopping trip instead of at the beginning because we’ve ran out of calories for our brain to make decisions. And this is when that feeling of overwhelm really does start to settle in over us because we cannot make good choices if we’re spending our day all day on lots of menial things, on lots of things that are insignificant.

We really want to focus our brainpower on those big things, on the goals, on the passion project, on the things that do drive you towards that North Star. And there’s so many great ways to do that. And we walked through that in the book through habits and routines and automations and different processes that you can do so that those things happen seamlessly without a lot of thinking. I like to say you can bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan, but if the kitchen is burning down around you, it does you no good.

So, we want to make sure all those things are still happening in the background. You know, laundry still needs to happen, bills need to be paid. You need to do, you know, yard work. You need to, you know, make sure you call your mom. All those things need to still happen, but we don’t want to spend all of our brain energy and all of our calories on that. We really want to spend our brain focus on the things that are most important.

So, that’s really where this study comes in where you know, these researchers found that when people had to memorize a number and they had two groups, one had a two digit number and the other group had, I think it was a seven digit number, after they had to memorize that number, they walked down the hall and they were offered a snack. The people who had the two digit number most often chose the healthy snack.

The people with seven digits, only five numbers more that they have to memorize yet they shows the unhealthy snack like I think it was, you know, a piece of cake or something like that. They chose the unhealthy snack more often because their brain was tired of making decisions. It was too busy thinking about these numbers, these seven digits, it ran out of calories. Even something as small as that really they can make a difference in how your brain works. That’s why we want to do less and that way we achieve more. When we focus on fewer things, more important things, we really can achieve bigger things in the long run.

Andrea: Love it. OK, what about when someone is kind of prioritized a project, they know that it’s important. They’ve decided that it’s more important than a lot of the immediate things around them, but they continuously do not execute on that project.

Tonya Dalton: Uh-hmm yes.

Andrea: What is getting in the way?

Tonya Dalton: I would tell you honestly, my first thought would be, it’s probably the to-do-list because I think you have to throw away that to-do-list. A to-do-list really just takes you everywhere but where you truly want to go. So, what I really encourage people to do is not to make it to-do-list, but instead make a priority list.

Because what happens is when we have a long list of things that need to happen, even if you know that task is important and it’s just there on that to do list, you know, amongst going to the grocery store or running to Target, you know, picking up the flea medication for the dog and everything else, it gets lost there. And we will naturally go for the easiest win because our brain loves dopamine. We get a little dopamine hit every time we scratch a line through something on our to-do-list. And your brain doesn’t care whether it’s a big task, an important task, or a small task.

So, our brain naturally navigates towards “Hey, let’s get that flea medication for the dog” instead of working on the presentation that really will drive you forward. So, when we make a priority list, we start with our list at the top and we work our way down based on priority, based on whether something is important, whether it’s urgent and we work our way down. And again, we go through that whole system of how a priority list works. But the best part to me is a priority list takes the exact same amount of time as a to-do-list. It’s just a to-do-list with intention.

So, when you start your day at the top and you work your way down that to-do-lists or down that priority list going from top priority down to your lowest priority, that’s when you make sure that you make time for those big things that truly are important. It’s no longer a jumbled mess of, you know, unorganized tasks that are written on a sheet of paper. It’s now organized and intentional making sure that you carve out time for those things that do matter the most.

Andrea: If your readers could make one shift in their lives from reading your book, what shift do you hope that they make?

Tonya Dalton: I want them to understand that they have choices. You know, a lot of times we believe that we don’t have ownership over our calendar. The number of times that people say to me, “Oh, I wish I could do that, but I just don’t own my day.” Or “Oh, I’ve got an overbearing boss and they take over my calendar.” I want to remind people that you do have choices and we talk about choices throughout the entire book.

Truly choices are what helps us discern and stop being busy and move towards being productive. Understanding that even in situations where you don’t think you have a choice, there are still choices there. But we just have to dig for them. We have to use what I call squirrel strategy to approach it at different angles and try to, you know, think outside the box to make this happen, but we have choices. We just have learned helplessness that tells us that we don’t.

Andrea: Oh yes.

Tonya Dalton: So, we go into that quite a bit in the book, but when you understand that you have choices and how you spend your day and where you focus your time and your energy, that’s when opportunities, the true opportunity to move towards that North Star. That’s when that begins to open up and that’s really when you can step into that greatness that you really want in your life and what you deserve in your life.

We all deserve to end our days feeling happy, feeling satisfied, feeling successful, and far too many people right now because we don’t feel like we have ownership because we’re running around trying to check a thousand things off our list, slip into bed at night and think “I didn’t get enough done. Why didn’t I work harder? Why did I do this? Why did I do that?” And we don’t feel satisfied. That’s what I want most for people is to finish their days and to really feel like, “You know what, today felt good and there is a lot to be said for feeling good, feeling happy,” and being productive really does make that happen.

Andrea: That is a incredibly empowering and I think we have a voice of influence and you have a lot of synergy here because we really want to see people realizing their own agency in their lives and being able to realize that they have choices like you’re talking about is such a huge piece of that. And so, I am sincerely grateful that you took time to come be on our podcast and share this message with our listeners and I hope that they get your books. So, tell us about how they can get your book.

Tonya Dalton: Yes. So, if you go to joyofmissingout.com, there’s information about where you can buy. It’s available really anywhere that books are sold. And then really if they’d purchase before October 1^st, I have some really amazing pre-bonuses including a discover your North Star course, which is a $247 value which you get for purchasing the book before October 1^st and you can redeem that at joyofmissingout.com.

But we dive deep into how do you decide what your mission is. Well, how do you decide what your purpose is and your passion and your priorities and we get into that. We peel back the layers of the onion and dive into who you truly are.

So, I’m really excited about that preorder bonus because I think that’s one of the things that people really struggle with is who am I and what do I really want out of this life? So, that is one of the preorder bonuses, but you can get the book at any time at joyofmissingout.com. Get on Amazon or Barnes & Noble or Target. But joyofmissingout.com is the best place to get all the information.

Andrea: And if they want to learn more from you from your podcast, what’s your podcast called again?

Tonya Dalton: Productivity Paradox. You can find information on me at tonyadalton.com, so Tonya with an O and a Y.

Andrea: All right. Thank you so much again for sharing your voice of influence with our listeners, Tonya.

Tonya Dalton: Thank you so much for having me.